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THE BROWNINGS 

THEIR LIFE AND ART 




'7'py7^-<f'hT Phota. :Ern,€ry WaZke f\Ze>-ndo^L.JE-C- 



ROBERT BROWNING 

From a draunng made by Field Talfourd, in Rome, iS^^ 



THE BROWNINGS 

THEIR LIFE AND ART 



BY 

LILIAN WHITING 

AUTHOR OF "the WORLD BEAUTIFUL," " ITALY 

THE MAGIC LAND," "thE SPIRITUAL 

SIGNIFICANCE," ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1917 



,^^^ 






<^' 



Copyright, 191 i, 
By Little, Brown, and Company. 



All rights reser-ved 






•v 



8. J. Pabkhill <fe Co., Boston, U.9.A. 



INSCRIBED TO 

ROBERT BARRETT BROWNING 

(CAVALIERE DELLA CORONA d' ITALIA) 

PAI>rrER, SCULPTOR, CONNOISSEUR IN ART 

WITH ENCHANTING REMEMBRANCES OF HOURS EST "lA TORRE 
all' ANTELLA" and the FAITHFUL REGARDS OF 

LILIAN WHITING 

Florence, Italy, 

June, 1911 



FOREWORD 

The present volume was initiated in Florence, and, from 
its first inception, invested with the cordial assent and the 
sjnnpathetic encouragement of Robert Barrett Browning. 
One never-to-be-forgotten day, all ethereal light and loveli- 
ness, has left its picture in memory, when, in company 
with Mr. Browning and his life-long friend, the Marchesa 
Peruzzi di' Medici (ndta Story), the writer of this biography 
strolled with them under the host's orange trees and among 
the riotous roses of his Florentine villa, " La Torre All' 
Antella," listening to their sparkling conversation, replete 
with fascinating reminiscences. To Mr. Browning the 
tribute of thanks, whose full scope is known to the 
Recording Angel alone, is here offered ; and there is the 
blending of both privilege and duty in grateful acknowl- 
edgements to Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Company for their 
courtesy in permitting the somewhat liberal drawing on 
their published Letters of both the Brownings, on which 
reliance had to be based in any effort to 

" Call up the buried Past again," 

and construct the story, from season to season, so far as 
might be, of that wonderful interlude of the wedded life of 
the poets. 

Yet any formality of thanks to this house is almost lost 
sight of in the rush of memories of that long and mutually- 
trusting friendship between the late George Murray Smith, 

vii 



viii FOREWORD 

the former head of this firm, and Robert Browning, a 
friendship .which was one of the choicest treasures in both 
their lives. 

To The Macmillan Company, the pubHshers for both 
the first and the present Lord Tennyson ; To Houghton 
Mifflin Company ; to Messrs. Dodd, Mead, & Company ; 
to The Cornhill Magazine (to which the writer is indebted 
for some data regarding Browning and Professor Masson) ; 
to each and all, acknowledgments are offered for their 
courtesy which has invested with added charm a work than 
which none was ever more completely a labor of love. 

To Edith, Contessa Rucellai (ndta Bronson), whose 
characteristically lovely kindness placed at the disposal of 
this volume a number of letters written by Robert Brown- 
ing to her mother, Mrs. Arthur Bronson, special gratitude 
is offered. 

" Poetry," said Mrs. Browning, " is its own exceeding 
great reward." Any effort, however remote its results from 
the ideal that haunted the writer, to interpret the lives of 
such transcendent genius and nobleness as those of Robert 
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, must also be its own ex- 
ceeding reward in leading to a passion of pursuit of all that 
is highest and holiest in the life that now is, and in that 

which is to come. 

LILIAN WHITING 

The Brunswick, Boston 
Midsummer Days, 191 1 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 
1812-1833 



Page 



The Most Exquisite Romance of Modem Life — Ances- 
try and Youth of Robert Browning — Love of Music — 
Formative Influences — The Fascination of Byron — 
A Home " Crammed with Books " — The Spell of 
Shelley — '* Incondita " — Poetic Vocation Definitely 
Chosen — " PauUne " i 

CHAPTER II 

1806-1832 

Childhood and Early Youth of EUzabeth Barrett — Hope 
End — " Summer Snow of Apple-Blossoms " — Her 
Bower of White Roses — " Living with Visions " — 
The Malvern Hills — Hugh Stuart Boyd — Love of 
Learning — " Juvenilia " — Impassioned Devotion to 
Poetry i6 

CHAPTER in 

1833-1841 

Browning Visits Russia — " Paracelsus " — Recognition 
of Wordsworth and Landor — " Straflford " — First 
Visit to Italy — Mrs. Carlyle's Baffled Reading of 
" Sordello " — Lofty Motif of the Poem — The Univer- 
sal Problem of Life — Enthusiasm for Italy — The 
Sibylline Leaves Yet to Unfold 26 

ix. 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

1833-1841 Page 

Elizabeth Barrett's Love for the Greek Poets — Ljn-ical 
Work — Serious Entrance on Professional Literature — 
Noble Ideal of Poetry — London Life — Kenyon — 
First Knowledge of Robert Browning 44 

CHAPTER V 

1841-1846 

" Bells and Pomegranates " — Arnould and Domett — "A 
Blot in the 'Scutcheon " — Macready — Second Visit 
to Italy — Miss Barrett's Poetic Work — "Colombe's 
Birthday " — " Lady Geraldine's Courtship " — " Ro- 
mances and Lyrics " — Browning's First Letter to Miss 
Barrett — The Poets Meet — Letters of Robert Brown- 
ing and Ehzabeth Barrett — " Loves of the Poets " — 
Vita Nuova r67N 

c 

CHAPTER VI 

1845-1850 

Marriage and Italy — "In That New World" — The 
Haunts of Petrarca — The Magic Land — In Pisa — 
Vallombrosa — '' Un Bel Giro " — Guercino's Angel — 
Casa Guidi — Birth of Robert Barrett Browning — 
Bagni di Lucca — " Sonnets from the Portuguese " — 
The Enchantment of Italy ,92^ 

CHAPTER VII 

1850-1855 

" Casa Guidi Windows " — Society in Florence — Mar- 
chesa d'Ossoli — Browning's Poetic Creed — Viileggi- 
atura in Siena — Venice — BrilHant Life in London — 
Paris and Milsand — Browning on Shelley — In Flor- 



CONTENTS xi 

Page 
ence — Idyllic Days in Bagni di Lucca — Mrs. Brown- 
ing's Spiritual Outlook — Delightful Winter in Rome — 
A Poetic Pilgrimage — Harriet Hosmer — Character- 
istics of Mrs. Browning 



'd 



CHAPTER VIII 

1855-1851 

London Life — An Interlude in Paris — " Aurora 
Leigh " — Florentine Days — " Men and Women " — 
The Hawthornes — " The Old YeUow Book"— A 
Summer in Normandy — The Eternal City — The 
Storys and Other Friends — Lilies of Florence — "It 

Is Beautiful! " '^^ 

CHAPTER IX ^ 

1861-1869 

The Completed Cycle — Letters to Friends — Browning's 
Devotion to His Son — Warwick Crescent — " Drama- 
tis Personae " — London Life — Death of the Poet's 
Father — Sarianna Browning — Oxford Honors the 
Poet — Death of Arabel Barrett — Audierne — " The 
Ring and the Book " ./^''i^ 

CHAPTER X "^ 

1869-1880 

In Scotland with the Storys — Browning's Conversation — 
An Amusing Incident — With Milsand at St. Aubin's — 
" The Red Cotton Night-cap Country " — Robert Bar- 
rett Browning's Gift for Art — Alfred Domett (" War- 
ing ") — " Balaustion's Adventure" — Browning and 
Tennyson — " Pacchiarotto " — Visits Jowett at Ox- 
ford — Declines Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews — " La 
Saisiaz " — Italy Revisited — The Dream of Asolo — 
" Ivanovitch " — Pride in His Son's Success — " Dra- 
matic Idylls " 221 



xil CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XI 

1880-1888 Page 

" Les Charmettes " — Venetian Days — Dr. Hiram Cor- 
son — The Browning Society — Oxford Honors Brown- 
ing — Katherine DeKay Bronson — Honors from Edin- 
burgh — Visit to Professor Masson — Italian Recogni- 
tion — Nancioni — The Goldoni Sonnet — At St. 
Moritz — In Palazzo Giustiniani — " Ferishtah's Fan- 
cies " — Companionship with His Son — Death of 
Milsand — Letters to Mrs. Bronson — DeVere Gar- 
dens — Palazzo Rezzonico — Sunsets from the Lido — 
Robert Barrett Browning's Gift in Portraiture . . . 238 

CHAPTER XII 
1888-1889 

** Asolando " — Last Days in DeVere Gardens — Letters 
of Browning and Tennyson — Venetian Lingerings and 
Friends — Mrs. Bronson's Choice Circle — Browning's 
Letters to Mrs. Bronson — ^Asolo — "In Ruby, Emer- 
ald, Chrysopras " — Last Meeting of Browning and 
Story — In Palazzo Rezzonico — Last Meeting with 
Dr. Corson — Honored by Westminster Abbey — A 
Cross of Violets — Choral Music to Mrs. Browning's 
Poem, " The Sleep " — "And with God Be the Rest! " 269 

Index 297 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

In Photogravure 

Robert Browning Frontispiece 

From a drawing by Field Talfoxird, Rome, 1855 Page 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning 39 

From a drawing by Field Talfourd, Rome, 1855 

Engravings 

Busts of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning ... 2 

Monument to Michael Angelo, by Vasari 80 

Church of Santa Croce, Florence 

Old Monastery at Vallombrosa 98 

The Guardian Angel, Guercino 103 

Church of San Agostino, Fano 

Monument to Dante, by Stefano Ricci 108 

Piazza di Santa Croce, Florence 

Palazzo Vecchio, Florence 113 

Statue of Savonarola, by E. Pazzi 116 

Sala dei Cinquecento, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence 

Fresco of Dante, by Giotto 121 

The Bargello, Florence 

Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence (known as 

the Duomo) 126 

The Ponte Vecchio and the Arno, Florence 142 

Casa Guidi 146 

The Clasped Hands of the Brownings 153 

Cast in bronze from the model taken by Harriet Hosmer in 
Rome, 1853 

xiii 



xiv ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 
The Campagna and Ruins of the Claudian Aqueducts, 

Rome 156 

The Coronation of the Virgin, by Filippo Lippi .... 166 

Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence 

Andrea del Sarto. Portrait of the Artist and his Wife . 170 
Pitti Gallery, Florence 

Equestrian Statue of Ferdinand© de' Medici, by Giovanni 

da Bologna 174 

Piazza dell' Annunziata, Florence 

Villa Petraja, near Florence 178 

Church of San Miniato, near Florence 182 

The Palazzo Barberini, Via Quattro Fontane, Rome . . 188 

The English Cemetery, Florence 197 

Tomb of EHzabeth Barrett Browning 200 

Kate Field 208 

From the portrait by Elihu Vedder, Florence, i860 

The Pallazzo Riccardi, Florence 214 

Bust of Robert Browning, by his Son 226 

Portrait of Robert Browning in 1882, by his Son . . . 242 

Church of San Lorenzo, Florence 246 

Portrait of Robert Barrett Browning, as a Child, 1859 . 263 
Portrait of Robert Browning, by George Frederick Watts, 

R. A 270 

Mrs. Arthur Bronson, by Ellen Montalba, in Asolo . . 274 

Miss Edith Bronson, (Comtessa Rucellai) 280 

Portrait of Professor Hiram Corson, by J. Colin Forbes, 

R. A 290 

Palazzo Rezzonico, Venice 294 



Engraved Facsimile of a letter from Robert Browning to 

Professor Hiram Corson 260 



THE BROWNINGS 

THEIR LIFE AND ART 

CHAPTER I 
1812-1833 

"Allons! after the Great Companions! and to belong to them!" 

"To know the universe itself as a road — as many roads — as 
roads for travelling souls." 

The Most Exquisite Roiiance of Modern Life — Ancestry 
AND Youth of Robert Browning — Love of Music — For- 
mative Influences — The Fascination of Byron — A Home 
"Crammed with Books" — The Spell of Shelley — ■ 
"Lsicondita" — Poetic Vocation Definitely Chosen — 
"Pauline." 

Such a very page de Contes is the life of the wedded poets, 
Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that it is difficult 
to realize that this immortal idyl of Poetry, Genius, and 
Love was less than fifteen years in duration, out of his 
seventy-seven, and her fifty-five years of life. It is a story 
that has touched the entire world 

"... with mystic gleams, 
Like fragments of forgotten dreams," 

this story of beautiful associations and friendships, of ar- 
tistic creation, and of the entrance on a wonderful realm of 
inspiration and loveHness. At the time of their marriage 
he was in his thirty-fifth, and she in her forty-first year, 



2 THE BROWNINGS 

although she is described as looking so youthful that she 
was like a girl, in her slender, flower-like grace; and he 
lived on for twenty-eight years after 

" Clouds and darkness 
Fell upon Camelot," 

with the death of his "Lyric Love." The story of the 
most beautiful romance that the world has ever known 
thus falls into three distinctive periods, — that of the 
separate life of each up to the time of their marriage; 
their married Hf e, with its scenic setting in the enchantment 
of Italy; and his life after her withdrawal from earthly 
scenes. The story is also of duplex texture; for the outer 
life, rich in associations, travel, impressions, is but the 
visible side of the life of great creative art. A delightful 
journey is made, but its record is not limited to the enjoy- 
ment of friends and place; a poem is written whose charm 
and power persist through all the years. 

No adequate word could be written of the Brownings 
that did not take account of this twofold Hfe of the poets. 
It is almost unprecedented that the power and resplen- 
dence and beauty of the Hfe of art should find, in the tem- 
poral environment, so eminent a correspondence of beauty 
as it did with Robert and EHzabeth Browning. Not that 
they were in any wise exempt from sorrow and pain; the 
poet, least of all, would choose to be translated, even if he 
might, to some enchanted region remote from all the min- 
gled experiences of humanity; it is the common lot of des- 
tiny, with its prismatic blending of failure and success, of 
purpose and achievement, of hope and defeat, of love and 
sorrow, out of which the poet draws his song. He would not 

choose 

"That jar of violet wine set in the air, 
That palest rose sweet in the night of life," 

to the exclusion of the common experiences of the day. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 3 

"Who never ate his bread in sorrow, 
Who never spent the darksome hours 
Weeping, and watching for the morrow, 
He knows you not, ye unseen Powers." 

But to those who, poets or otherwise, see life somewhat in 
the true proportion of its lasting relations, events are largely 
transmuted into experiences, and are realized in their 
extended relations. The destiny of the Brownings led them 
into constantly picturesque surroundings; and the force 
and manliness of his nature, the tender sweetness and play- 
ful loveHness of hers, combined with their vast intellectual 
range, their mutual genius for friendships, their devotion 
to each other and to their son, their reverence for their 
art, and their lofty and noble spirituality of nature, — all 
united to produce this exquisite and unrivaled romance 
of life, — 

"A Beauty passing the earth's store." 

The rapture of the poet's dream pervaded every experience. 

"O Life, O Poetry, 
Which means life in life." 

The transmutation of each into the other, both Life and 
Poetry, as revealed in their lives, is something as excep- 
tional as it is beautiful in the world's history. 

It is only to those who live for something higher than 
merely personal ends, that the highest happiness can come; 
and the aim of these wedded poets may well be read in the 
lines from "Aurora Leigh": 

"... Beloved, let us love so well, 
Our work shall still be better for our love, 
And still our love be sweeter for our work, 
And both commended, for the sake of each, 
By all true workers and true lovers bom." 



4 THE BROWNINGS 

In the ancestry of Robert Browning there was nothing 
especially distinctive, although it is representative of the 
best order of people; of eminently reputable Ufe, of mod- 
erate means, of culture, and of assured intelUgence. It is 
to the Brownings of Dorsetshire, who were large manor- 
owners in the time of Henry VII, that the poet's family is 
traced. Robert Browning, the grandfather of the poet, was 
a clerk in the Bank of England, a position he obtained 
through the influence of the Earl of Shaftesbury. Entering 
on this work at the age of twenty, he served honorably for 
fifty years, and was promoted to the position of the Bank 
Stock office, a highly responsible place, that brought him 
in constant contact with the leading financiers of the day. 
Born in 1749, he had married, in 1778, Margaret Tittle, the 
inheritor of some property in the West Indies, where she was 
born of English parentage. The second Robert, the father 
of the poet, was the son of this union. In his early youth 
he was sent out to take charge of his mother's property, and 
his grandson, Robert Barrett Browning, relates with par- 
donable pride how he resigned the post, which was a lucra- 
tive one, because he could not tolerate the system of slave 
labor prevailing there. By this act he forfeited all the 
estate designed for him, and returned to England to face 
privation and to make his own way. He, too, became a 
clerk in the Bank of England, and in 181 1, at the age of 
thirty, married Sarah Anna Wiedemann, the daughter 
of a ship-owner in Dundee. Mr. Wiedemann was a Ger- 
man of Hamburg, who had married a Scotch lady; and 
thus, on his maternal side, the poet had mingled Scotch 
and German ancestry. The new household estabHshed it- 
self in Southampton Street, Camberwell, and there were 
born their two children, Robert, on May 7, 181 2, and 
on January 7, 1814, Sarah Anna, who came to be known as 
Sarianna through all her later life. 

The poet's father was not only an efficient financier, but 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 5 

he was also a man of scholarly culture and literary tastes. 
He was a lover of the classics, and was said to have 
known by heart the first book of the Iliad, and the Odes 
of Horace. There is a legend that he often soothed his 
little son to sleep by humming to him an ode of Anacreon. 
He wrote verse, he was a very clever draughtsman, and 
he was a collector of rare books and prints. Mr. W. J. 
Stillman, in his "Autobiography of a Journalist," refers 
to the elder Browning, whom he knew in his later years, as 
"a serene, untroubled soul, ... as gentle as a gentle 
woman, a man to whom, it seemed to me, no moral con- 
flict cDuld ever have arisen to cloud his frank acceptance 
of life as he found it come to him. . . . His unworldliness 
had not a flaw." In Browning's poem entitled "Develop- 
ment " (in "Asolando") he gives this picture of his father 
and of his own childhood: 

"My Father was a scholar and knew Greek. 
When I was five years old, I asked him once 
' What do you read about? ' 

' The siege of Troy.* 
* What is a siege, and what is Troy? ' 

Whereat 
He piled up chairs and tables for a town, 
Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat 
— Helen, enticed away from home (he said) 
By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close 
Under the footstool. . . . 



This taught me who was who and what was what; 

So far I rightly understood the case 

At five years old; a huge delight it proved 

And still proves — thanks to that instructor sage 

My Father . . ." 

The poet's mother was a true gentlewoman, character- 
ized by fervent religious feeling, delicacy of perception, and 
a great love for music. She was reared in the Scottish 



6 THE BROWNINGS 

kirk, and her husband in the Church of England, but they 
both connected themselves after their marriage with an 
"Independent" body that held their meetings in York 
Street, where the Robert Browning Hall now stands. They 
were, however, greatly attached to the Rev. Henry Melvill 
(later Canon at St. Paul's), whose evening service they 
habitually attended. While the poet's mother had Uttle 
training in music, she was a natural musician, and was 
blessed with that keen, tremulous susceptibihty to musi- 
cal influence that was so marked a trait in her son. 
WilUam Sharp pictures a late afternoon, when, pla3dng 
softly to herself in the twiUght, she was startled to hear a 
sound in the room. "Glancing around, she beheld a Httle 
white figure distinctly outlined against an oak bookcase, 
and could just discern two large wistful eyes looking ear- 
nestly at her. The next moment the child had sprung into 
her arms, sobbing passionately at he knew not what, but, 
as his paroxysm of emotion subsided, whispering over and 
over, 'Play! Play!'" 

The elder Browning was an impassioned lover of medi- 
eval legend and story. He was deeply familiar with Para- 
celsus, with Faust, and with many of the Talmudic tales. 
His library was large and richly stored, — the house, in- 
deed, "crammed with books," in which the boy browsed 
about at his own will. It was the best of all possible edu- 
cations, this atmosphere of books. And the wealth of old 
engravings and prints fascinated the child. He would 
sit among these before a glowing fire, while from the adjoin- 
ing room floated strains "of a wild Gaelic lament, with its 
insistent falling cadences." It is recorded as his mother's 
chief happiness, — "her hour of darkness and soHtude and 
music." Of such fabric are poetic impressions woven. The 
atmosphere was what Emerson called the "immortal ichor." 
The boy was companioned by the "liberating gods." 
Something mystic and beautiful beckoned to him, and in- 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 7 

cantations, unheard by the outer sense, thronged about 
him, pervading the air. The lad began to recast in English 
verse the Odes of Horace. From his school, on holiday 
afternoons, he sought a lonely spot, elm-shaded, where he 
could dimly discern London in the distance, with the gleam 
of sunshine on the golden cross of St. Paul's, — lying for 
hours on the grass whence, perchance, he 

" Saw distant gates of Eden gleam 
And did not dream it was a dream." 

Meantime the boy read Junius, Voltaire, Walpole's 
Letters, the "Emblems" of Quarles (a book that remained 
as a haunting influence all his Ufe), and Mandeville's "Fable 
of the Bees." The first book of his own purchase was a 
copy of Ossian's poems, and his initial effort in Hterary 
creation was in Ukeness of the picturesque imaginations 
that appealed with peculiar fascination to his mind. 

"The world of books is still the world," wrote Mrs. 
Browning in "Aurora Leigh," and this was the world of 
Robert Browning's early Ufe. The genesis of many of his 
greatest poems can be traced directly to this atmosphere 
of books, and their constant use and reference in his child- 
hood. Literature and Hfe, are, indeed, so absolutely inter- 
penetrated and so interdependent that they can almost in- 
variably be contemplated as cause and effect, each reacting 
upon the other in determining sequences. By the magic of 
some spiritual alchemy, reading is transmuted into the 
qualities that build up character, and these qualities, in 
turn, determine the continued choice of books, so that selec- 
tion and result perpetuate themselves, forming an unceas- 
ing contribution to the nature of life. If with these quali- 
ties is united the kindling imagination, the gift that makes 
its possessor the creative artist, the environment of books 
and perpetual reference to them act as a torch that ignites 
the divine fire. Browning's early stimulus owes much, not 



8 THE BROWNINGS 

only to the book-loving father, but to his father's brother, 
his uncle Reuben Browning, who was a classical scholar 
and who took great interest in the boy. Preserved to the 
end of the poet's life was a copy of the Odes of Horace, in 
translation, given to him as a lad of twelve, with his uncle's 
autograph inscription on the fly-leaf. This was the trans- 
lation made by Christopher Smart, whose " Song of David" 
soon became one of the boy's favorites, and it is curious to 
trace how, more than sixty years later, Browning embodied 
Smart in his "Parleyings with Certain People of Impor- 
tance in their Day," as one with whom 

"... truth found vent 
In words for once with you. . . ." 

Browning, with the poet's instant insight, read the essen- 
tial story of his boyhood into the lines: 

"... Dreaming, bhndfold led 
By visionary hand, did soul's advance 
Precede my body's, gain inheritance 
Of fact by fancy. . . ?" 

No transcription of the poet's childhood could even sug- 
gest the fortunate influences surrounding him that did not 
emphasize the rare culture and original power of his father. 
The elder Browning was familiar with old French and 
with both Spanish and Italian literature. ''His wonderful 
store of information might really be compared to an inex- 
haustible mine," said one who knew him well. 

It is easy to see how out of such an atmosphere the 
future poet drew unconsciously the power to weave his 
"magic web" of such poems as the "Parleyings," "Abt 
Vogler," "Ferishtah's Fancies," and was lured on into 
that realm of marvelous creation out of which sprang his 
transcendent masterpiece, "The Ring and the Book." 

The elder Browning's impassioned love of books was in- 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 9 

stanced by the curious fact that he could go in the dark to 
his library, and out of many hundreds of volumes select 
some particular one to which conversational reference 
had incidentally been made regarding some point which 
he wished to verify. He haunted all the old book-stalls 
in London, and knew their contents better than did their 
owners. 

Books are so intimately associated with the very springs 
of both character and achievement that no adequate idea 
of the formative influences of the life and poetry of Robert 
Browning could be gained without familiarity with this 
most determining and conspicuous influence of his boy- 
hood. The book with which a man has Hved becomes an 
essential factor in his growth. "None of us yet know," 
said Ruskin, "for none of us have yet been taught in early 
youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful 
thought, proof against all adversity, bright fancies, satis- 
fied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure- 
houses of precious and restful thoughts, . . . houses 
built without hands for our souls to Hve in." These houses 
for the soul, built in thought, will be transposed into outer 
form and semblance. 

There is a nebulous but none the less pernicious tradition 
that great literature is formidable, and presents itself as a 
task rather than as a privilege to the reader. Devotion to 
the best books has been regarded as something of a test of 
mental endurance, for which the recompense, if not the 
antidote, must be sought in periods of indulgence in the 
frivolous and the sensational. Never was there a more 
fatal misconception. It is the inconsequential, the crude, 
the obtuse, that are dull in literature, as in Hfe; and stu- 
pidity in various languages might well be entitled to rank 
among the Seven Deadly Sins of Dante. Even in the great- 
est literature there is much that the child may easily learn 
to appreciate and to love. 



lo THE BROWNINGS 

"Great the Master 
And sweet the Magic " 

that opens the golden door of literary stimulus. Books are 
to the mind as is food to the body. Emerson declares that 
the poet is the only teller of news, and Mrs. Browning 
pronounced poets as 

"The only truth-tellers now left to God." 

Familiarity with noble thought and beautiful expression 
influences the subconscious nature to an incalculable 
degree, and leads "the spirit finely touched" on "to all 
fine issues." 

Browning lived in this stimulating atmosphere. He 
warmed his hands at the divine fire; and the fact that all 
this richness of resource stimulated rather than stifled him 
is greatly to the credit of his real power. Favorable sur- 
roundings and circumstances did not serve him as a cushion 
on which to go to sleep, but rather as the pedestal on 
which he might cHmb to loftier altitudes. It was no 
lotus-eating experience into which the lad was lulled, but 
the vital activity of the life of creative thought. The 
Heavenly Powers are not invariably, even if frequently, 
sought in sorrow only, and in the mournful midnight 
hours. There are natures that grow by affluence as 
well as by privation, and that develop their best powers 
in sunshine. 

"Even in a palace life can be well lived," said Marcus 
Aurelius. The spirit formed to dwell in the starry spaces 
is not allured to the mere enjoyment of the senses, even 
when material comfort and intellectual luxuries may 
abound. Not that the modest abundance of the elder 
Browning's books and pictures could take rank as intel- 
lectual luxury. It was stimulus, not satiety, that these 
suggested. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART II 

Pictures and painters had their part, too, in the uncon- 
scious culture that surrounded the future poet. London 
in that day afforded little of what would be called art; the 
National Gallery was not opened until Browning was in his 
young manhood ; the Tate and other modern galleries were 
then undreamed of. But, to the appropriating tempera- 
ment, one picture may do more than a city full of galleries 
might for another, and to the small collection of some three 
or four hundred paintings in the Dulwich Gallery, Brown- 
ing was indebted for great enjoyment, and for the art that 
fostered his sympathetic appreciation. In after years he 
referred to his gratitude for being allowed its privileges when 
under the age (fourteen) at which these were supposed to 
be granted. Small as was the collection, it was representa- 
tive of the ItaUan and Spanish, the French and the Dutch 
schools, as well as of the English, and the boy would j5x on 
some one picture and sit before it for an hour, lost in its 
suggestion. It was the more imaginative art that enchained 
him. In later years, speaking of these experiences in a 
letter to Miss Barrett, he wrote of his ecstatic contempla- 
tion of "those two Guidos, the wonderful Rembrandt's 
'Jacob's Vision,' such a Watteau. . . ." An old engraving 
from Correggio, in his father's home, was one of the sources 
of inspiration of Browning's boyhood. The story fasci- 
nated him; he never tired of asking his father to repeat it, 
and something of its truth so penetrated into his conscious- 
ness that in later years he had the old print hung in his 
room that it might be before him as he wrote. It became 
to him, perhaps, one of 

" the unshaped images that lie 
Within my mind's cave." 

The profound significance of the picture evidently haunted 
him, as is made evident by a passage in "Pauline" that 
opens : 



X2 THE BROWNINGS 

"But I must never grieve whom wing can waft 
Far from such thoughts — as now. Andromeda! 
And she is with me; years roll, I shaU change, 
But change can touch her not — so beautiful 
With her fixed eyes . . ." 

Is there gained another glimpse of Browning's boyhood in 
those lines in "Pauline"?: 

"I am made up of an intensest hfe, 
Of a most clear idea of consciousness 
Of self, distinct from all its qualities. 
From all affections, passions, feelings, powers." 

The various and complex impressions, influences, and 
shaping factors of destiny that any biographer discerns in 
the formative years of his subject are as indecipherable as a 
pahmpsest, and as little to be classified as the contents of 
Pandora's box; nor is it on record that the man himself 
can look into his own history and rightly appraise the rela- 
tive values of these. Nothing, certainly, could be more 
remote from the truth than the reading of autobiographic 
significance into any stray Une a poet may write; for im- 
agination is frequently more real than reahty. Yet many 
of the creations of after Hfe may trace their germination to 
some incident or impression, WilHam Sharp offers a beau- 
tiful and interesting instance of one of these when he as- 
cribes the entrancing fantasy of ''The FHght of the Duch- 
ess " to a suggestion made on the poet's mind as a child 
on a Guy Fawkes day, when he followed across the fields 
a woman singing a strange song, whose refrain was: "Fol- 
lowing the Queen of the Gypsies, O!" The haunting line 
took root in his memory and found its inflorescence in that 
memorable poem. 

It was not conducive to poetic fancy when the lad was 
placed in the school of a Mr. Ready, at Peckham, where he 
solaced himself for the rules and regulations which he ab- 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 13 

horred by writing little plays, and persuading his school- 
fellows to act in them with him. 

Browning's first excursion into Shelley's poems, brought 
home to him one night as a gift from his mother, was in one 
of the enchanting evenings of May; where, at the open 
window by which he sat, there floated in the melody of 
two nightingales, one in a laburnum, "heavy with its 
weight of gold," and the other in a copper-beech, at the op- 
posite side of the garden. Such an hour mirrors itself un- 
consciously in a poet's memory, and affords, in future years, 
"such stuff as dreams are made on." 

Byron, who, as Mazzini says, "led the genius of Britain 
on a pilgrimage throughout all Europe," stamped an im- 
press upon the youthful Browning that may be traced 
throughout his entire life. There was something in the gen- 
ius of Byron that acted as an enormous force on the nature 
in response to it, that transformed nebulous and floating 
ideals and imaginings into hope and resolution, that burned 
away barriers and revealed truth. By its very nature in- 
fluence is determined as much by the receiver as by the 
inspirer, and if a light is applied to a torch, the torch, too, 
must be prepared to ignite, or there will be no blaze. 

"A deft musician does the breeze become 
Whenever an yEolian harp it finds; 
Hornpipe and hurdygurdy both are dumb 
Unto the most musicianly of winds." 

The fire of Byron, the spirituaHty of Shelley, illuminated 
that world of drift and dream in which Robert Browning 
dwelt; and while Shelley, with his finer spirit, his glorious, 
impassioned imagination, 

"A creature of impetuous breath," 

incited poetic ardors and unmeasured rapture of vision, 
Byron penetrated his soul with a certain effective energy 
that awakened in him creative power. The spell of 



\M 



14 THE BROWNINGS 

Shelley's poetry acted upon Browning as a vision revealed 
of beauty and radiance. For Shelley himself, who, as 
Tennyson said, "did yet give the world another heart and 
new pulses," Browning's feeling was even more intense. 

In the analysis of Shelley's poetic nature Browning offers 
the critical reader a key to his own. He asserts that it is the 
presence of the highest faculty, even though less developed, 
that gives rank to nature, rather than a lower faculty more 
developed. Although it was in later years that the im- 
pression Shelley made upon his boyhood found adequate 
expression in his noted essay, the spell reflected itself in 
"Pauline," and is to be distinctly traced in many of his 
poems throughout his entire life. He was aware from the 
first of that peculiarly kindling quality in Shelley, the 
flash of life in his work: 

"He spurreth men, he quickeneth 
To splendid strife." 

Under the title of "Incondita" was collected a group 
of the juvenile verses of Robert Browning, whose special 
claim to interest is in the revelation of the impress made 
upon the youth by Byron and Shelley. 

Among the early friends of the youthful poet were Alfred 
Domett (the "Waring " of his future poem), and Joseph 
Arnould, who became a celebrated judge in India. 

With Browning there was never any question about his 
definite vocation as a poet. "Pauline" was published in 
1833, before he had reached his twenty-first birthday. Re- 
jected by publishers, it was brought out at the expense of 
his aunt, Mrs. Silverthorne; and his father paid for the 
publication of "Paracelsus," "Sordello," and for the first 
eight parts of "Bells and Pomegranates." On the appear- 
ance of "Pauline," it was reviewed by Rev. William John- 
son Fox, as the "work of a poet and a genius." Allan 
Cunningham and other reviewers gave encouraging expres- 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 15 

sions. The design of "Pauline " is that spiritual drama to 
which Browning was always temperamentally drawn. It 
is supposed to be the confessions and reminiscences of a 
dying man, and while it is easy to discern its crudeness and 
inconsistencies, there are in it, too, many detached passages 
of absolute and permanent value. As this : 

" Sun-treader, life and light be thine for ever! 
Thou art gone from us; years go by and spring 
Gladdens, and the young earth is beautiful, 
Yet thy songs come not ..." 

Mr. Browning certainly gave hostages to poetic art when 
he produced "Pauline," in which may be traced the same 
conceptions of life as those more fully and clearly presented 
in "Paracelsus" and " Sordello." It embodies the conviction 
which is the very essence and vital center of all Browning's 
work — that ultimate success is attained through partial 
failures. From first to last Browning regards life as an 
adventure of the soul, which sinks, falls, rises, recovers 
itself, relapses into faithlessness to its higher powers, yet 
sees the wrong and aims to retrieve it; gropes through 
darkness to light; and though "tried, troubled, tempted," 
never yields to alien forces and ignominious failure. The 
soul, being divine, must achieve divinity at last. That is 
the crystallization of the message of Browning. 

The poem " Pauline," Hghtly as Mr. Browning himself 
seemed in after life to regard it, becomes of tremendous 
importance in the right approach to the comprehension 
of his future work. It reveals to us in what manner the 
youthful poet discerned "the Gleam." Like Tennyson, 
he felt "the magic of MerHn," — of that spirit of the 
poetic ideal that bade him follow. 

" The Master whisper'd 
' FoUow The Gleam.' " 

And what unguessed sweetness and beauty of life and love 
awaited the poet in the unfolding years! 



CHAPTER II 
1806- 1832 

" Here 's the garden she walked across. 

Roses ranged in a valiant row, 

I will never- think she passed you by!" 

Childhood and Early Youth of Elizabeth Barrett — Hope 
End — "Summer Snow of Apple-Blossoms" — Her Bower 
OF White Roses — "Living with Visions" — The Mal- 
vern Hills — Hugh Stuart Boyd — Love of Learning — • 
"Juvenilia" — Impassioned Devotion to Poetry. 

The literature of childhood presents nothing more beauti- 
ful than the records of the early years of Elizabeth Barrett. 
Fragmentary though they be, yet, gathered here and there, 
they fall into a certain consecutive unity, from which one 
may construct a mosaic-like picture of the daily life of the 
Httle girl who was born on March 6, 1806, in Coxhoe Hall, 
Durham, whence the family soon removed to Hope End, a 
home of stately beauty and modest luxury. There were 
brothers to the number of eight; and two sisters, Henrietta 
and Arabel, all younger than herself. Edward, the eldest 
son, especially cared for EUzabeth, holding her in tender 
and almost reverential love, and divining, almost from his 
infancy, her exquisite gifts. Apparently, the eldest sister 
was also greatly beloved by the whole troop of the younger 
brothers, — Charles, Samuel, George, Henry, Alfred, and 
the two younger, who were named Septimus and Octavius. 
With three daughters and eight sons, the household did 
not lack in merriment and overflowing life; and while the 



THE BROWNINGS 17 

little Elizabeth was bom to love books and dreams, and 
assimilated learning as naturally as she played with her 
dolls, she was no prodigy, set apart because of fantastic 
qualities, but an eager, earnest little maid, who, although 
she read Homer at eight years of age, yet read him with her 
doll clasped closely in one hand, and who wrote her child- 
ish rhymes as unconsciously as a bird sings. It is a curious 
coincidence that this love of the Greeks, as to history, 
literature, and mythology, characterized the earliest child- 
hood of both Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. 
Pope's Homer was the childish favorite of each. "The 
Greeks were my demigods," she herself said, in later life, of 
her early years, "and haunted me out of Pope's Homer, 
until I dreamt more of Agamemnon than of Moses the 
black pony." 

The house at Hope End has been described by Lady 
Carmichael as "a luxurious home standing in a lovely park, 
among trees and sloping hills," and the earliest account 
that has been preserved of the little girl reveals her sitting 
on a hassock, propped against the wall, in a lofty room 
called "Elizabeth's chamber," with a stained glass oriel win- 
dow through which golden gleams of light fell, lingering on 
the long curls that drooped over her face as she sat ab- 
sorbed in a book. She was also an eager worker in her 
garden, the children all being given a plot to cultivate for 
themselves, and Elizabeth won special fame for her bower 
of white roses. 

There are few data about the parents of Ehzabeth Bar- 
rett, and the legal name, Moulton-Barrett, by which she 
signed her marriage register and by which her father is 
commonly known, has been a source of some confused 
statements. Her father, Edward Barrett Moulton, came 
into an inheritance of property by which he was required 
to add the name of Barrett again, hyphenating it, and was 
thus known as Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett. He 



1 8 THE BROWNINGS 

married Mary Graham Clarke, a native of Newcastle-on- 
the-Tyne, a woman of gentle loveliness, who died on October 
I, 1828. Mr. Moulton-Barrett lived until i860, his death 
occurring only a year before that of his famous daughter, 
who was christened Elizabeth Barrett Moulton, and who 
thus became, after her father's added name, Elizabeth Bar- 
rett Moulton-Barrett, although, except when a legal sig- 
nature was necessary, she signed her name as Elizabeth 
Barrett. The family are still known by the hyphenated 
name; and Mrs. Browning's namesake niece, a very schol- 
arly and charming young woman, now living in Rome, is 
known as EHzabeth Moulton-Barrett. She is the daughter 
of Mrs. Browning's youngest brother, Alfred, and her 
mother, who is still living, is the original of Mrs. Brown- 
ing's poem, "A Portrait." While Miss Moulton-Barrett 
never saw her aunt (having been born after her death), she 
is said to resemble Mrs. Browning both in temperament 
and character. By a curious coincidence the Barrett 
family, like the Brownings, had been for generations the 
owners of estates in the West Indies, and it is said that 
Elizabeth Barrett was the first child of their family to be 
born in England for more than a hundred years. 

Her father, though born in Jamaica, was brought to 
England as a young child, and he was the ward of Chief 
Baron Lord Abinger. He was sent to Harrow, and after- 
wards to Cambridge, but he did not wait to finish his uni- 
versity course, and married when young. One of his sisters 
was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and this portrait is 
now in the possession of Octavius Moulton-Barrett, Esq., 
of the Isle of Wight. 

EUzabeth's brother Edward was but two years her 
junior. It was he who was drowned at Torquay, almost 
before her eyes, and who is commemorated in her "De 
Profundis." Of the other brothers only three lived to man- 
hood. When Elizabeth was three years of age, the family 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 19 

removed to Hope End in Herefordshire, a spacious and 
stately house with domes and minarets embowered in a 
grove of ancient oaks. It was a place calculated to appeal 
to the imagination of a child, and in later years she wrote 
of it: 

"Green the land is where my daily 
Steps in jocund childhood played, 
Dimpled close with hill and valley, 

Dappled very close with shade, — 
Summer-snow of apple-blossoms, 
Running up from glade to glade." 

Here all her girlhood was passed, and it was in the garden 
of Hope End that she stood, holding up an apron filled with 
flowers, when that lovely picture was painted representing 
her as a little girl of nine or ten years of age. Much of rather 
apochryphal myth and error has grown up about Mrs. 
Browning's early life. However gifted, she was in no wise 
abnormal, and she galloped on Moses, her black pony, 
through the Herefordshire lanes, and offered pagan sacri- 
fices to some imaginary Athene, " with a bundle of sticks 
from the kitchen fire and a match begged from an indulgent 
housemaid." In a letter to Richard Hengist Home, 
under date of October 5, 1843, ^^ reply to a request of his for 
data for a biographical sketch of her for "The New Spirit 
of the Age," she wrote: 

"... And then as to stories, mine amounts to the knife- 
grinder's, with nothing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a 
cage would have as good a story. Most of my events, and 
nearly all my intense pleasures, have passed in my thoughts. 
I wrote verses — as I dare say many have done who never 
wrote any poems — very early, at eight years of age, and 
earlier. But, what is less common, the early fancy turned into 
a will, and remained with me, and from that day to this, poetry 
has been a distinct object with me, — an object to read, think, 
and live for." 



20 THE BROWNINGS 

When she was eleven or twelve, she amused herself by- 
writing a great epic in four books, called "The Battle of 
Marathon," which possessed her fancy. Her father took 
great pride in this, and, "bent upon spoiling me," she 
laughingly said in later years, had fifty copies of this child- 
ish achievement printed, and there is one in the British 
Museum library to-day. No creator of prose romance 
could invent more curious coincidences than those of the 
similar trend of fancy that is seen between the childhood 
of Robert Browning and EUzabeth Barrett. Her "Battle 
of Marathon " revealed how the Greek stories enchanted 
her fancy, and how sensitive was her ear in the imitation of 
the rhythm caught from Pope. This led her to the delighted 
study of Greek, that she might read its records at first hand; 
and Greek drew her into Latin, and from this atmosphere 
of classic lore, which, after all, is just as interesting to the 
average child ^as is the (too usual) juvenile pabulum, she 
drew her interest in thought and dream. The idyllic soH- 
tude in which she Uved fostered all these mental excursions. 
"I had my fits of Pope and Byron and Coleridge," she has 
related, "and read Greek as hard under the trees as some of 
your Oxonians in the Bodleian; gathered visions from 
Plato and the dramatists, and ate and drank Greek. . . . 
Do you know the Malvern Hills? The Hills of Piers Plow- 
man's Visions? They seem to me my native hills. Beau- 
tiful, beautiful they were, and I lived among them till I 
had passed twenty by several years." 

Mr. Moulton-Barrett was one of the earliest of social 
reformers. So much has been said, and, alas! with too 
much justice, it must be conceded, of his eccentric tyranny, 
his monomania, — for it amounted to that, in relation to the 
marriage of any of his children regarding which his refusal 
was insanely irrational, — that it is pleasant to study him 
for a moment in his more normal life. In Ledbury, the near- 
est village, he would hold meetings for the untaught people, 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 21 

read and pray with them, and this at a period when for 
a man of wealth to concern himself in social betterment was 
almost unknown. He was truly "the friend of the un- 
friended poor," and by his side, with wondering, upturned, 
childish eyes, was the Uttle Elizabeth, an ardent and 
sympathetic companion. Until quite recently there were 
still living those who remembered Mr. Barrett as this intelli- 
gent and active helper ; and in the parish church is a monu- 
ment to him, by the side of a gloriously decorated tomb of 
the fourteenth century, with an inscription to liis memory 
that vividly recalls the work of one who strove to revive 
the simple faith in God that has always, in all nations and 
in all centuries, met every real need of life. 

Mrs. Barrett, a sweet and gentle woman, without special 
force of character, died when Elizabeth was but twenty 
years of age; and it was some five years before her mother's 
death that Elizabeth met with the accident, from the 
fall from her saddle when trying to mount her pony, that 
caused her life-long delicacy of health. Her natural buoy- 
ancy of spirits, however, never failed, and she was endowed 
with a certain resistless energy which is quite at variance 
with the legendary traditions that she was a nervous 
invalid. 

Hardly less than Browning in his earliest youth, was 
Ehzabeth Barrett "full of an intensest Ufe." Her Italian 
master one day told her that there was an unpronounceable 
English word that expressed her exactly, but which as 
he could not give in English, he v/ould express in his Own 
tongue, — testa lunga. Relating this to Mr. Browning in 
one of her letters, she says: "Of course the signor meant 
headlong ! — and now I have had enough to tame me, and 
might be expected to stand still in my stall. But you see 
I do not. Headlong I was at first, and headlong I continue, 
■ — precipitately rushing forward through all manner of 
nettles and briers instead of keeping the path; guessing at 



22 THE BROWNINGS 

the meaning of unknown words instead of looking into the 
dictionary, — tearing open letters, and never untying a 
string, — and expecting everything to be done in a minute, 
and the thunder to be as quick as the lightning." 

Impetuous, vivacious, with an inimitable sense of humor, 
full of impassioned vitality, — this'^was the real Elizabeth 
Barrett, whose characteristics were in no wise changed 
during her entire life. Always was she 

"A creature of impetuous breath," 

full of vivacious surprises, and witty repartee. 

Hope End was in the near vicinity of Eastnor Castle, a 
country seat of the Somersets; it is to-day one of the 
present homes of Lady Henry Somerset, and there are 
family records of long, sunny days that the young girl-poet 
passed at the castle, walking on the terraces that lead 
down to the still water, or lying idly in the boat as the 
ripples of the Uttle lake lapped against the reeds and rushes 
that grew on the banks. In the castle library is preserved 
to-day an autograph copy of the first volume of Elizabeth 
Barrett's poems, published when she was twenty, and con- 
taining that didactic "Essay on Mind" written when she 
was but seventeen, and of which she afterward said that 
it had "a pertnessand a pedantry which did not even then 
belong to the character of the author," and which she re- 
gretted, she went on to say, "even more than the literary 
defectiveness," This volume was presented by her to a 
meir jer of the Somerset family whose name is inscribed 
over that of her own signature. 

During these years Hugh Stuart Boyd, the blind scholar, 
was living in Great Malvern, and one of Miss Barrett's 
greatest pleasures was to visit and read Greek with him. 
He was never her "tutor," in the literal sense, as has so 
widely been asserted, for her study of Greek was made 
with her brother Edward, under his tutor, a Mr. Mac- 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 23 

Sweeney; but she read and talked of Greek literature 
(especially of the Christian poets) with him, and she loved 
to record her indebtedness to him *'for many happy 
hours." She wrote of him as one "enthusiastic for the 
good and the beautiful, and one of the most simple and 
upright of human beings." The memory of her discussions 
with him is embalmed in her poem, "Wine of Cyprus," 
which was addressed to him: 

"And I think of those long mornings 
Which my thought goes far to seek, 
When, betwixt the foHo's turnings, 
Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek." 

Elizabeth Barrett was more than a student, however 
scholarly, of Greek. She had a temperamental affinity for 
the Greek poets, and such translations as hers of "Pro- 
metheus Bound" and Bion's "Lament for Adonis," iden- 
tify her with the very Ufe itself of ^Eschylus and Bion. In 
her essay on "The Greek Christian Poets" we find her 
saying: "We want the touch of Christ's hand upon our 
literature, as it touched other dead things . . . Something 
of a yearning after this may be seen among the Greek 
Christian poets, . . . religious poets of whom the univer- 
sal church and the world's literature would gladly embrace 
more names than can be counted to either." 

All her work of these early years is in that same delicate 
microscopic handwriting of her later life. She laughingly 
professed a theory that "an immense amount of phys'cal 
energy must go to the making of those immense, sweeping 
hand-writings achieved by some persons." She instanced 
that of Landor, "who writes as if he had the sky for a 
copy-book and dotted his i's in proportion." 

Poetry as a serious art was the most earnest object in 
the life of Elizabeth Barrett. To her poetry meant "life 
in Ufe." 

"Art 's a service, — mark. " 



24 THE BROWNINGS 

The poetic vocation could hardly be said to be so much 
a conscious and definite choice with her as a predetermined 
destiny, and still it was both. The possibility of not being 
a poet could never have occurred to her. There could have 
been as little question of Beethoven's being other than a 
musician or of Raphael as being other than a painter. In 
poetry EUzabeth Barrett recognized the most potent form 
of service; and she held that poetic art existed for the 
sake of human co-operation with the Divine purposes. 

The opening chapters of her life in the lovely seclusion 
of Hope End closed in 1832 with the removal of the family 
to Sidmouth in Devonshire, Here they were bestowed in 
a house which had been occupied by the Grand Duchess 
Helena. It commanded a splendid sea view, on which four 
drawing-room windows looked out, and there were green 
hills and trees behind. They met a few friends, — Sir John 
Kean, the Herrings, — and the town abounded in green 
lanes, " some of them quite black with foliage, where it is twi- 
light in the middle of the day, and others letting in beau- 
tiful gUmpses of the hills and the sunny sea." Henrietta 
Barrett took long walks, Elizabeth accompanying her sister, 
mounted on her donkey. The brothers and sisters were all 
fond of boating and passed much time on the water. They 
would row as far as Dawlish, ten miles distant, and back; 
and after the five o'clock dinner there were not infrequently 
moonlight excursions on the sea. During these first months 
at Sidmouth Miss Barrett read Bulwer's novels, which she 
asserts "quite delighted" her; as she found in them "all 
the dramatic talent which Scott has, and all the passion 
which he has not." Bulwer seemed to her, also, "a far 
more profound discriminator of character " than Scott. She 
read Mrs. Trollope, "that maker of books," whose work 
she characterized as not novels but "libels," She found in 
Mrs. Trollope "neither the delicacy nor the candor which 
constitute true nobility of mind," and thought that her 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 25 

talent formed but "a scanty veil to shadow her other 
defects." 

Miss Barrett grew to love Sidmouth, with its walks on 
the seashore; and letters, reading, poetic production, and 
iamily interests filled the time. Here, too, she found time 
to enter on a task dear to her, the translation of the 
"Prometheus Bound " of ^Eschylus. 

Some years later, however, she entirely revised this early 
translation, of which she wrote to Hugh Stuart Boyd 
that it was " as cold as Caucasus, and flat as the neigh- 
boring plain," and that " a palinodia, a recantation," was 
necessary to her. In her preface to the later translation 
she begged that her reader would forgive her English for 
not being Greek, and herself for not being ^schylus. 



CHAPTER III 

1833 -184 1 

"... I press God's lamp 
Close to my breast; its splendor, soon or late, 
Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge one day." 

Browning Visits Russia — " Paracelsus " — Recognition op 
Wordsworth and Landor — "Strafford" — First Visit 
TO Italy — Mrs. Carlyle's Baffled Reading of "Sor- 
DELLO " — Lofty Motif of the Poem — The Universal 
Problem of Life — Enthusiasm for Italy — The Sibylline 
Leaves yet to Unfold. 

From Camberwell to St. Petersburg was somewhat of a 
transition. This was Mr. Browning's initial excursion into 
a wider world of realities, as distinguished from that mirage 
which rises in the world of dreams and mental nebulae. 
*'To know the universe itself as a road, — as many roads," 
is the way in which the beckoning future prefigures itself 
to the artist temperament. 

"All around him Patmos lies 
Who hath spirit-gifted eyes." 

The eyes thus touched with the chrism of poetic art see 
the invisible which is peopled vdth forms unseen to others, 
and which offers a panorama of Hving drama. It is the poet 
who overhears the "talk of the gods," and when he shall 
report 

"Some random word they say," 

he becomes 

"... the fated man of men 
Whom the ages must obey." 



THE BROWNINGS 27 

This was the undreamed destiny hovering over the young 
poet, luring him on like a guiding cloud which became a 
pillar of fire by night. 

Among his London friends was the Chevalier George 
de Benkhausen, the Russian Consul-General, who, being 
suddenly summoned to Russia on some secret mission of 
state, invited Browning to accompany him. Browning 
went "nominally in the character of secretary," Mrs. Orr 
says, and they fared forth on March i, by steamer to 
Rotterdam, and then journeyed more than fifteen hundred 
miles by diligence, drawn by relays of galloping horses. 
The expedition was to Browning a rich mine of poetic 
material. The experience sank into the subconsciousness 
as seed to await fruition. In his "Ivan Ivanovitch," 
where is seen 

"This highway broad and straight e'en from the Neva's mouth 
To Moscow's gates of gold," 

and in which the unending pine forests rising from the snow- 
covered ground are so vividly pictured; and in "Colombe's 
Birthday," where is seen the region of the heroine, — 

" Castle Ravestein — 
That sleeps out trustfully its extreme age 
On the Meuse' quiet bank, where she lived queen 
Over the water-buds, ..." 

and the place 

"... when he hid his child * 

Among the river-flowers at Ravestein," 

it can be seen how all this country impressed his imagina- 
tion. Professor Hall Griffin finds in the fifth book of "Bor- 
dello " an unmistakable description of the most famous and 
oldest portrait of Charlemagne, which hangs in the Council 
Hall of the Rath-haus, in Aix, which Mr. Browning saw on 
this trip. During these three months he saw something of 



28 THE BROWNINGS 

Russian society, and on the breaking up of the ice in the 
Neva in spring, witnessed the annual ceremony of the 
Czar's drinking the first glass of water from it. Much of 
the gorgeous, barbaric splendor of Russian fairs and booths, 
''with droshkies and fish-pies" on the one hand, and 
stately palaces on the other, haunted him, and reflected 
themselves in several of his poems. Especially did the 
Russian music and strains of folk-song linger in his memory 
for all the after years. 

On his return from Russia Browning had some fancy for 
entering on a diplomatic career, and was momentarily dis- 
appointed at not receiving an appointment to Persia, which 
he had in mind; fortunately for him and for the world he 
was held to the orbit of his poetic gift. Diplomacy has an 
abundance of recruits without devastating poetic genius to 
furnish them. The winter of 1834 found him deeply ab- 
sorbed in "Paracelsus." This poem is dedicated to the 
Marquis Amedee de Ripert-Monclar, who was a great 
friend of Browning at this time. The Marquis was four 
years his senior; he was in England as a private agent 
for the Duchesse de Berri and the RoyaHst party in France 
to the EngHsh government. The subject of the poem is said 
to have been suggested by the Marquis, although the fact 
that all this medieval lore had been famihar to Browning 
from his earHest childhood must be accounted the pre- 
determining factor in its creation. William Sharp quotes 
Browning as having once said of his father: ''The old gen- 
tleman's brain was a storehouse of fiterary and philosophi- 
cal antiquities. He was completely versed in medieval 
legend, and seemed to have known Paracelsus, Faustus, and 
even Talmudic personages, personally," and his son assimi- 
lated unconsciously this entire atmosphere. 

Both "Paracelsus" and "Sordello" seem to spring, as by 
natural poetic evolution, from "Pauline"; all three of 
these poems are, in varying degree, a drama of the soul's 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 29 

progress. They all suggest, and " Paracelsus," especially, in 
a great degree embodies, the Hegelian philosophy; yet Mr. 
Barrett Browning expresses his rather positive conviction 
that his father never read Hegel at any period of his life. 
Dr. Corson regarded these early poems of Browning as of 
peculiar value in showing his attitude toward things. "We 
see in what direction the poet has set his face," said Dr. 
Corson, "what his philosophy of life is, what soul-Ufe 
means with him, what regeneration means, what edification 
means in its deepest sense of building up within us the spir- 
itual temple." Dr. Corson further illuminated this attitude 
of the poet by pointing out that he emphasized the ap- 
proach to perfection as something that cannot be brought 
out through what is born and resides in the brain; but it 
must be by "the attracting power of magnetic personali- 
ties, the ultimate, absolute personaHty being the God-man, 
Christ. The human soul is regarded in Browning's poetry," 
continued Dr. Corson, "as a complexly organized, indi- 
vidualized, divine force, destined to gravitate toward the 
Infinite. How is this force with its numberless checks and 
counter-checks, its centripetal and centrifugal tendencies, 
best determined in its necessarily obHque way? How much 
earthly ballast must it carry to keep it sufiiciently steady, 
and how little, that it may not be weighed down with 
materialistic heaviness? " Incredibly enough, in the reve- 
lations of the retrospective view, "Paracelsus " made little 
impression on the Uterary critics of the day; the Athenceum 
devoting to it less space even than to "the anonymous 
PauUne," while the "Philip van Artevelde " of Henry 
Taylor (now hardly remembered) received fifteen col- 
umns of tribute, in which the critic confided to the public 
his enthusiastic estimate of that production. Neither 
Blackwood's, the Quarterly, nor the Edinburgh even men- 
tioned "Paracelsus"; the Athenceum admitted that it 
had talent, but admonished the poet that "Writers would 



30 THE BROWNINGS 

do well to remember that though it is not difficult to imitate 
the mysticism and vagueness of Shelley, we love him — not 
because of these characteristics, but in spite of them." 
The one gleam of consolation to the young poet in all this 
general neglect or unfavorable comment was that of a 
three-column article from the pen of John Forster in the 
Examiner, then conducted by Leigh Hunt, and on whose 
staff were Sergeant Talfourd and Proctor (Barry Cornwall) 
beside Forster, who was then a rising young journalist of 
twenty-three, only one month the senior of Browning, But 
Forster spoke with no uncertain note; rather, with au- 
thority, and in this critique he said: 

"Since the publication of 'Philip van Artevelde' we have met 
with no such evidences of poetical genius . . . and we may 
safely predict for its author a brilliant career, if he continues 
true to the present promise of his genius." 

The immediate effect of the publication of "Paracelsus " 
was of a social rather than of a literary character, for some- 
thing in it seemed magnetic to the life of the day, and the 
young poet found himself welcomed by a brilliant literary 
circle. He met Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor, 
Dickens, Monckton Milnes (later Lord Houghton), Proc- 
tor (Barry Cornwall), Home, Sergeant Talfourd, Leigh 
Hunt, and others. Hunt was then domiciled in Cheyne 
Row, in close proximity to the Carlyles, with whom Brown- 
ing had already formed a friendship. 

Rev. William Johnson Fox, one of Browning's earliest 
friends, was at this time living at Craven Hill, Bayswater, 
and on an evening when Macready had dined with him, 
Browning came in. This evening (November 27, 1835) is 
noted in Macready's diary, and after speaking of Mr. Fox 
as an "original and profound thinker," he adds: 

"Mr. Robert Browning, the author of 'Paracelsus,' came in 
after dinner; I was very much pleased to meet him. His face 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 31 

is full of intelligence. ... I took Mr. Browning on, and re- 
quested to be allowed to improve my acquaintance with him. 
He expressed himself warmly, as gratified by the proposal, 
wished to send me his book. We exchanged cards, and parted." 

Later (under date of December 7), Mr. Macready 
records: 

" Read * Paracelsus,' a work of great daring, starred with 
poetry of thought, feeling, diction, but occasionally obscure. 
The writer can scarcely fail to be a leading spirit of the 
time." 

On New Year's Eve Mr. Macready invited a little house 
party, among whom were Forster and Browning. "Mr. 
Browning was very popular with the whole party," writes 
Mr. Macready in his journal; *'his simple and enthusiastic 
manner engaged attention and won golden opinions from 
all present; he looks and speaks more like a youthful poet 
than any man I ever saw." 

Browning's personal appearance, "slim, and dark, and 
very handsome," as Mary Cowden Clarke said, is pictured 
by many of his friends of that time. "As a young man," 
writes William Sharp, "he seems to have had a certain ivory 
delicacy of coloring . . . and he appeared taller than he 
really was, partly because of his rare grace of movement, 
and partly from a characteristic high poise of the head when 
listening intently to music or conversation. . . . His hair 
was so beautiful in its heavy sculpturesque waves as to 
attract frequent notice. Another, and more subtle personal 
charm, was his voice, then with a rare, flute-like tone, 
clear, sweet, and resonant." 

Macready was not only a notable figure on the stage at 
this period, but he was also (what every great actor must 
be) a man of thought, intense sensibility, and wide culture. 
Soon after Macready had appeared in Talfourd's "Ion" 



32 THE BROWNINGS 

(the premiere being on the playwright's birthday), Talfourd 
gave a supper at his house, at which Browning for the first 
time met Wordsworth and Landor. Macready himself 
sat between these two illustrious poets, with Browning op- 
posite to him. The guests included Ellen Tree, Miss Mit- 
ford, and Forster. Macready, recording this night in his 
diary, writes of "Wordsworth who pinned me." Landor,. 
it seems, talked of constructing drama, and said he "had 
not the faculty," that he "could only set persons to talk- 
ing; all the rest was chance." But an ever remembered 
moment came for the young poet when the host proposed 
a toast to the author of "Paracelsus," and Wordsworth, 
rising, said: "I am proud to drink to your health, Mr. 
Browning," and Landor bowed with his inimitable, cour- 
teous grace, raising his glass to his lips. For some years, 
whenever Wordsworth visited London, Forster invited 
Browning to meet him. The younger poet was never an 
enthusiast in his mild friendship for the elder, although in 
after years (1875) he replied to a question by Rev. A. B. 
Grosart, the editor of Wordsworth's works, that while in 
hasty youth he did "presume to use the great and vener- 
ated personality of Wordsworth as a sort of painter's 
model," he intended in "The Lost Leader " no portrait of 
the entire man. While Wordsworth's political attitude did 
not please the young disciple of Shelley, for Landor he con- 
ceived the most profound admiration and sympathetic 
affection. It was a striking sequel to this youthful attrac- 
tion that in Landor's desolate old age it should be Brown- 
ing who tenderly cared for him, and surrounded his last 
days with unfailing comfort and solicitude. 

j\t this memorable supper, just as Browning was about to 
take his leave, Macready laid his hand on the young man's 
shoulder, saying earnestly: "Write a play for me, and 
keep me from going to America." The thought appealed 
to the poet, who replied: "Shall it be historical and 



THEIR LIFE AND ART S3 

English? What do you say to 'Strafford ' for a subject?" 
Forster was then bringing out his biography of Strafford, 
on which Browning had assisted, so that the theme had 
already engaged his imagination. A few days after the 
supper Macready records in his diary receiving a note from 
Browning and adds: "What can I say upon it? It was a 
tribute which remunerated me for the annoyances and 
cares of years; it was one of the very highest, may I not 
say the highest, honor I have through life received." 

A certain temperamental sympathy between the two 
men is evident, though Macready sounded no such fathom- 
less depths as lay, however unsuspected, in Browning; but 
Macready gives many indications of poetic sjrmpathies, as, 
for instance, when he records in his diary how he had been 
looking through Coleridge's translation of Wallenstein, 
"abounding with noble passages and beautiful scenes," to 
see if it would lend itself to stage representation. 

On November 19 of this autumn Macready notes in 
his journal that Browning came that night to bring his 
tragedy of "Strafford," of which the fourth act was in- 
complete. "I requested him to write in the plot of what 
was deficient," says Macready, and drove to the Garrick 
Club while Browning wrote out this story. Later, there 
was a morning call from Browning, who gave him an inter- 
esting old print of Richard, from some tapestry, and they 
talked of "La ValUere." All the time we get glimpses of an 
interesting circle: Bulwer and Forster call, and they discuss 
Cromwell; Bulwer 's play of "Virginius" is in rehearsal; 
Macready acts Cardinal Wolsey; there is a dinner at Lady 
Blessington's, where are met Lord Canterbury, Count 
D'Orsay, Bulwer, Trelawney, and Proctor; there is a call 
on Miss Martineau, and meetings with Thackeray and 
Dickens; Kenyon appears in the intersecting circles; 
Marston (the father of the blind poet) writes his play, 
"The Patrician's Daughter "; Mr. Longfellow, "a Profes- 



34 



THE BROWNINGS 



sor at one of the U, S. Universities," appears on the scene, 
*and there is a dinner at which ''Mr. and Mrs. N. P. Willis 
sat next to Longfellow." On a night when Browning came 
with some alterations for "Strafford," a stranger called, 
"saying he was a Greek, a great lover of the drama; I in- 
troduced Browning to him as a great tragic poet," records 
Macready, "and the youth wrote down his name, telling 
us he was setting off for Athens directly." 

The rehearsals of "Strafford " came on, but Macready 
seems already to have had misgivings. "In Shakespeare," 
he writes, "the great poet has only introduced such events 
as act on the individuals concerned; but in Browning's 
play we have a long scene of passion — upon what? A 
plan destroyed, a parliament dissolved ..." It is easy to 
see how Browningesque this was; for to the poet no events 
of the objective life were so real and significant as those of 
the purely mental drama of thought, feeUng, and purpose. 
The rehearsals were, however, gratifying to the author, it 
seems, for Macready records in his diary (that recurs like 
the chorus in a Greek tragedy) that he was happy "with 
the extreme delight Browning testified at the rehearsal of 
my part, which he said to him was a full recompense for 
having written the play, as he had seen his utmost hopes of 
character perfectly embodied." The play was performed 
at the Covent Garden Theater on the night of May 3, 1837. 

Both Edmund Gosse and William Sharp deny that 
Browning's plays failed on the stage; at all events, with 
each attempt there were untoward circumstances which 
alone would have contributed to or even doomed a play to 
a short tenure. 

In 1886 "Strafford " was produced in London under the 
auspices of the Browning Society, and the real power of the 
play surprised as well as deeply impressed the audiences 
who saw it. But "Pauline," "Paracelsus," and "Straf- 
ford " all have a peculiar element of reminiscent impor- 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 35 

tance, if it may be so termed, in that they were the 
forerumiers, the indications of the great work to come. 

There is no dramatic poem of Browning's that has not 
passages of superb acting effects, as well as psychological 
fascinations for the thinker; and the future years were to 
touch him with new power to produce work whose dramatic 
power Hves in imperishable significance. "Strafford " had 
a run of only five nights at this first time of its production; 
Macready received and accepted an offer to go to America, 
and other things happened. Browning became absorbed in 
his "Sordello," and suddenly, on Good Friday of 1838, he 
sailed for Venice, "intending to finish my poem among the 
scenes it describes," he wrote to John Robertson, who had 
been introduced to Browning by Miss Martineau. On a 
sailing ship, bound for Trieste, the poet found himself the 
only passenger. It was on this voyage, while between 
Gibraltar and Naples, that he wrote "How They Brought 
the Good News from Ghent to Aix." It was written on 
deck, penciled on the fly-leaf of Bartoli's De' Simholi tras- 
portati al Morale. When Dr. Corson first visited Browning 
in 1 88 1, in his London home in Warwick Crescent, Brown- 
ing showed his guest this identical copy of the book, with 
the penciled poem on the fly-leaves, of which Dr. Corson 
said, in a private letter to a friend: 

"One book in the library I was particularly interested in, — 
Bartoli's Simboli, or, rather, in what the poet had written 
in pencil on its fly-leaves, front and back, namely, 'How they 
brought the good news from Ghent to Aix.' " 

Dr. Corson added that he had been so often asked as to 
what this "good news " was, that he put the question to 
Mr. Browning, who replied: 

"'I don't remember whether I had in my mind any in par- 
ticular, when I wrote the poem'; and then, after a pause," 
continued Dr. Corson, " he said, with a dash of expression 



36 THE BROWNINGS 

characteristic of him, ' Of course, very important news were 
carried between those two cities during that period.'" 

In Mrs. Orr's biography of Browning she quotes a long 
letter written by him to Miss Haworth, in the late summer 
of 1838, after his return from this Italian trip, in which he 
says: 

"You will see ' Sordello ' in a trice, if the fagging fit holds. 
I did not write six Unes while absent (except a scene in a play, 
jotted down as we sailed through the straits of Gibraltar), but I 
did hammer out some four, two of which are addressed to you, 
... I saw the most gorgeous and lavish sunset in the world. 
... I went to Trieste, then to Venice, then through Treviso, 
and Bassano to the mountains, delicious Asolo, all my places and 
castles you will see. Then to Vicenza, Padua, and Venice again. 
Then to Verona, Trent, Innspruck (the Tyrol), Munich, Salz- 
burg, Frankfort and Mayence; down the Rhine to Cologne, 
then to Aix-le-Chapelle, Liege, and Antwerp; then home. , . . 
I saw very few Italians, * to know,' that is. Those I did see I 
liked. . . ." 

It is related that the captain of the ship became so much 
attached to Browning that he offered him a free passage to 
Constantinople; and that his friendly attraction to his 
youthful passenger was such that on returning to England 
he brought to the poet's sister a gift of six bottles of attar 
of roses. The poems of "Pippa Passes " and "In a Gon- 
dola " may be directly traced to this visit, and Browning 
seemed so invigorated by it that his imagination was 
aflame with a multitude of ideas at once. 

Meanwhile "Paracelsus" was winning increasing ap- 
preciation. The poet did not escape the usual sweeping 
conclusion generally put forth regarding any unusual work, 
that the author has made extensive studies for it, — as if 
ideas and imagination drew their inspiration from the 
outer world, and were solely to be appraised, as to their 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 37 

results, by the capacity for cramming. So much cramming, 
so much genius! He who thus mistakes inspiration for 
industry certainly proves how very remote is his mind from 
the former. With this marvelous work by a young man 
of twenty-three the usual literary legends were set afloat, 
like thistledown in the air, which seem to have floated and 
alighted everywhere, and which now, more than seventy-five 
years later, are apparently still floating and alighting on the 
pens of various writers, to the effect that "Paracelsus" is 
the result of "vast research among contemporary records," 
till the poem added another to the Seven Labors of Her- 
cules. As a matter of fact, and as has already been noted. 
Browning had merely browsed about his father's library. 

Dr. Berdoe points out that the real "Paracelsus " cannot 
be understood without considerable excursions into the 
occult sciences, and he is quite right as to the illumination 
these provide, in proportionate degree as they are acquired 
by the reader; as a matter of course they enlarge his hori- 
zon, and offer him clues to unsuspected labyrinths; and so 
fine and complete is Dr. Berdoe's own commentary on "Par- 
acelsus " that it might not unduly be held as supplementary 
to the reader's entire enjoyment of the poem. Dr. Berdoe 
notes that the Bishop of Spanheim, who was the instructor 
of Paracelsus, defined "divine magic," as another name 
for alchemy, "and lays down the great doctrine of all medi- 
eval occultism, as of all modem theosophy, — of a soul- 
power equally operative in the material and the immaterial, 
in nature and in the consciousness of man." The sympa- 
thetic reader of Browning's "Paracelsus " will realize, how- 
ever, that the drama he presents is spiritual, rather than 
occult. It is not the search for the possible mysteries, or 
achievements of the crucible. It is the adventure of the 
soul, not the penetration into the secrets of imknowii 
elementals. 

In the autumn of 1835 the Browning family removed 



^S THE BROWNINGS 

from Camberwell to Hatcham. They bestowed them- 
selves in a spacious, delightful old house, with "long, low 
rooms," wherein the household gods, inclusive of the six 
thousand books of the elder Browning's treasured Ubrary, 
found abundant accommodation; and the outlook on the 
Surrey hills gratified them all. During these years we 
catch a few glimpses of the poet's only sister, Sarianna, 
who was two years younger than her brother, and quite 
as fond of listening to the conversation of an uncle, Wil- 
liam Shergold Browning, who had removed to Paris. Here 
he was connected with the Rothschild banking house, and 
had achieved some distinction as the author of a "History 
of the Huguenots." He also wrote two historical novels, 
entitled "Hoel Mar en Morven " and "Provost of Paris," 
and compiled one of those harmless volumes entitled 
*' Leisure Hours." It was this uncle who had brought about 
the introduction of his nephew and Marquis Amedee de 
Ripert-Monclar, whose uncle, the Marquis de Fortia, 
a member of the Institut, was a special friend of William 
Shergold Browning, In later years a grandson of the Paris 
Browning, after graduating at Lincoln College, became 
Crown prosecutor in New South Wales. He is known as 
Robert Jardine Browning, and he was on terms of intimacy 
with his cousins, Robert and Sarianna, whom he often 
visited. 

The family friendship with Carlyle was a source of great 
pleasure to Mrs. Browning, the poet's mother, and there 
is on record a night when Carlyle and his brother dined 
with the Brownings at Hatcham. Another family friend 
and habitue was the Rev. Archer Gurney, who at a later 
time became Chaplain to the British Embassy in Paris. 
Mr. Gurney was a writer of poems and plays, lyrics and 
dramatic verse, and a volume of his work entitled "Era 
Cipollo and Other Poems " was published, from which 
Browning drew_his motto for "Colombe's Birthday." Mr. 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 
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THEIR LIFE AND ART 39 

Gurney was deeply interested in young Browning's poetry, 
and there is a nebulous trace of his having something to do 
with the publication of "Bells and Pomegranates." An- 
other friend of the poet was Christopher Dowson, who 
married the sister of Alfred Domett; at their homes, Al- 
bion Terrace, and their summer cottage in Epping Forest, 
Browning was a frequent visitor. Dowson died early; but 
Field Talfourd (a brother of the author of *'Ion " and the 
artist who made those crayon portraits of Browning and 
his wife, in the winter of 1859, in Rome), Joseph Arnould, 
and Alfred Domett, with one or two other young men, com- 
prised the poet's more intimate circle at this time. Arnould 
and Domett were both studying for the Bar; Arnould had 
gained the Newdigate in 1834, and had won great applause 
by his recital (in the Sheldonian Theater) of his ** Hospice 
of St. Bernard." Later he was offered the editorship of the 
Daily News, founded by Forster and Dickens, but he kept 
true to his legal studies and in time became the Judge of 
the High Court at Bombay, and was knighted bythe Crown. 

There was a dinner given by Macready at which Brown- 
ing, Carlyle, and Miss Martineau were guests, and later a 
dinner at the Carlyles' where Browning met a son of Burns 
*' who sang some of his father's songs." To a friend Brown- 
ing wrote: *'I dined with dear Carlyle and his wife (catch 
me calling people ' dear ' in a hurry) yesterday. I don't 
know any people like them." 

Browning passed a day with Miss Martineau at Ascot, 
and again visited her in Elstree, where she was staying with 
the Macreadys. She greatly admired "Paracelsus," and 
spoke of her first acquaintance with his poetry as a "won- 
derful event." He dined with her at her home in West- 
minster, and there met John Robertson, the assistant 
editor of the Westminster Review, to which Miss Martineau 
was a valued contributor. Henry Chorley, a musical critic 
of the day, was another guest that night, and soon after 



40 THE BROWNINGS 

Browning dined with him "in his bachellor abode," the 
other guests being Arnould, Domett, and Bryan Proctor; 
later, at a musicale given by Chorley, Browning met Char- 
lotte Cushman and Adelaide Kemble. Chorley drew 
around him the best musicians of the time: Mendelssohn, 
Moscheles, Liszt, David, and other great composers were 
often rendered in his chambers. Proctor was then living 
in Harley Street, and his house was a center for the literary 
folk of the day. 

George EHot speaks of the indifference with which we 
gaze at our unintroduced neighbor, "while Destiny stands 
by, sarcastic, with our dramatis personcB folded in her hands." 
It was such an hour of destiny as this when, at a dinner 
given by Sergeant Talfourd, at his home (No. 56) in Rus- 
sell Square, Browning first met John Kenyon. Our great 
events mostly come to us Hke gods in disguise, and this 
evening was no exception. Unknown and undreamed of, 
the young poet had come to one of those partings of the 
ways which are only recognized in the perspective of time. 
Browning's life had been curiously free from any romance 
beyond that with the muses. The one woman with whom 
he had seemed most intimate, Miss Fanny Haworth, was 
eleven years his senior, and their intercourse, both con- 
versationally and in letters, had been as impersonal as Hter- 
ature itself. She was a writer of stories and verse, and 
had celebrated her young friend in two sonnets. This 
friendship was one of literary attractions alone, and the 
poet had apparently devoted all his romance to poetry 
rather than demanded it in life. But now, golden doors 
were to open. 

At this dinner at Mr. Talfourd's, John Kenyon came over 
to the poet, after they had left the dining-room, and in- 
quired if he were not the son of his old school-fellow, Robert 
Browning. Finding this surmise to be true, he became 
greatly attached to him. Mr. Kenyon had lost his wife 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 41 

some time previously; he had no children, and he was a 
prominent and favorite figure in London society. Southey 
said of Kenyon that he was "one of the best and pleasantest 
of men, whom every one likes better the longer he is 
known," and Kenyon, declaring that Browning "deserved 
to be a poet, being one in heart and Ufe," offered to him his 
"best and most precious gift," — that of an introduction 
to his second cousin, Elizabeth Barrett. 

This was the first intimation of Destiny, but the meet- 
ing was still to remain in the future. "Sordello " was pub- 
lished in 1840, — "a colossal derelict on the ocean of 
poetry," as William Sharp terms it. The impenetrable 
nature of the intricacies of the work has been the theme 
of many anecdotes. Tennyson declared that there were 
only two lines in it — the opening and the closing ones — 
wliich he understood, and "they are both lies," he feelingly 
added. Douglas Jerrold tackled it when he was just recov- 
ering from an illness, and despairingly set down his in- 
ability to comprehend it to the probability that his mind 
was impaired by disease; and thrusting the book into 
the hands of his wife he entreated her to read it at once. 
He watched her breathlessly, and when she exclaimed, 
"I don't know what this means; it is gibberish," Jerrold 
exclaimed, "Thank God, I am not an idiot." 

Still another edifying testimony to the general inability 
to understand "Sordello" is given by a French critic, 
Odysse Barot, who quotes a passage where the poet says, 
"God gave man two faculties," and adds, "I wish while 
He was about it {pendant qu'il etait en train) God had sup- 
, plied another — namely, the power of understanding Mr. 
Browning." 

Mrs. Carlyle declared that she read "Sordello" atten- 
tively twice, but was unable to discover whether the title 
referred to "a man, a city, or a tree"; yet most readers 
of this poem will be able to recognize that Bordello was a 



42 THE BROWNINGS 

singer of the thirteenth century, whose fame suddenly lures 
him from the safety of solitude to the perils of society in 
Mantua, after which "immersion in worldliness " he again 
seeks seclusion, and partially recovers himself. The motif 
of the poem recalls the truth expressed in the lines: 

" Who loves the music of the spheres 
And lives on earth, must close his ears 
To many voices that he hears." 

Suddenly a dazzling political career opens before Sor- 
dello; he is discovered to be — not a nameless minstrel, but 
the son of the great GhibelHne chief, Salinguerra; more mar- 
velous still, he is loved by Palma, in her youthful beauty 
and fascination; and the crucial question comes, as in some 
form it must come to every Ufe, whether he shall choose all 
the kingdoms of power and glory, or that kingdom which 
is not of earth, and cometh not with observation. 

It is easy to reaUze how such a problem would appeal to 
Robert Browning. Notwithstanding the traditional "ob- 
scurity " of "Sordello," it offers to the thoughtful reader a 
field of richest and most entrancing suggestion. 

To Alfred Domett, under date of May 22, 1842, Brown- 
ing writes:^ 

"... I cannot well say nothing of my constant thoughts 
of you, most pleasant remembrances of you, earnest desires for 
you. I have a notion you will come back some bright morning 
a dozen years hence and find me just gone — to heaven, or 
Timbuctoo ! I give way to this fancy, for it lets me write what, 
I dare say, I have written niggardly enough, of my real love 
for you, better love than I had supposed I was fit for. ... I 
have read your poems; you can do anything, and I should 
think would do much. I will if I live. At present, if I stand on 
head or heels I don't know; what men require I know as little; 
and of what they are in possession I know not. . . . With this 

1 Letters of Robert Browning and Alfred Domett. New York: Dodd, 
Mead and Co. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 43 

I send you your ' Sordello.' I suppose, I am sure, indeed, that 
the translation from Dante, on the fly-leaf, is your own. ..." 

In another letter to Alfred Domett, Browning thus re- 
fers to Tennyson : 

"... But how good when good he is! That noble 'Locks- 
ley Hall!'" 

Browning had already become enamored of Italy; and 
Mrs. Bridell-Fox, writing to William Sharp, speaks of 
meeting the poet after his return, and thus describes the 
impression he made upon her : ^ 

"I remember him as looking in often in the evenings, having 
just returned from his first visit to Venice. I cannot tell the 
date for certain. He was full of enthusiasm for that Queen of 
Cities. He used to illustrate his glowing descriptions of its beau- 
ties, the palaces, the sunsets, the moonrises, by a most original 
kind of etching. Taking up a bit of stray notepaper, he would 
hold it over a lighted candle, moving the paper about gently till 
it was cloudily smoked over, and then utilizing the darker 
smears for clouds, shadows, water, or what not, would etch with 
a dry pen the forms of lights on cloud and palace, on bridge 
or gondola, on the vague and dreamy surface he had produced. 
My own passionate longing to see Venice dates from those 
delightful, well-remembered evenings of my childhood." 

This visit of the young poet to Italy forged the link of 
that golden chain which was to unite all his future with 
that land of art and song which held for him such wonderful 
Sibylline leaves of the yet undreamed-of chapters of his 
life. 

* Life of Robert Browning. London: Walter Scott, Limited. 



CHAPTER IV 
1833-1841 

" O Life, O Beyond, 
Art thou fair, art thou sweet? " 

" How the world is made for each of us! 

How all we perceive and know in it 
Tends to some moment's product thus, 

When a soul declares itself — to wit, 
By its fruit, the thing it does! " 

Elizabeth Barrett's Love for the Greek Poets — Lyrical 
Work — Serious Entrance on Professional Literature 
— Noble Ideal of Poetry — London Life — Kenyon — 
First Knowledge of Robert Browning. 

Elizabeth Barrett was but twelve days in translating the 
"Prometheus Bound" of ^schylus, and of the result of 
this swift achievement she herself declared, when laugh- 
ingly discussing this work with Horne in later years, that 
it ought to have been "thrown in the fire immediately 
afterward as the only means of giving it a little warmth." 
Combined with a few of her other poems, however, it was 
published (anonymously) in 1832, and received from the 
Athenceum the edifying verdict that "those who adventure 
in the hazardous lists of poetic translation should touch 
any one rather than ^schylus, and they may take warn- 
ing from the writer before us." 

The quiet Ufe at Sidmouth goes on, — goes on, in fact, for 
three years, — and the life is not an unmixed joy to Miss 
Barrett. " I like the greenness and the tranquillity and the 



THE BROWNINGS 45 

sea," she writes to a friend. ''Sidmouth is a nest among 
elms; and the lulling of the sea and the shadow of the hills 
make it a peaceful one; but there are no majestic features 
in the country. The grandeur is concentrated upon the 
ocean without deigning to have anything to do with the 
earth. . . ." 

In the summer of 1835 the Barretts left Sidmouth for 
London, locating at first in Gloucester Place (No. 74) 
where they remained for three years. Hugh Stuart Boyd 
had, in the meantime, removed to St. John's Wood; Mr. 
Kenyon and Miss JMitford became frequent visitors. Miss 
Barrett's literary activity was stimulated by London life, 
and she began contributing to a number of periodicals, and 
her letter-writing grew more and more voluminous. To 
]\Ir. Boyd she wrote soon after their arrival in London: 

"As George is going to do what I am afraid I shall not be 
able to do to-day, — to visit you, — he must take with him a 
few lines from me, to say how glad I am to feel myself again 
only at a short distance from you; and gladder I shall be when 
the same room holds both of us. But I cannot open the window 
and fly. . . . How much you will have to say to me about the 
Greeks, imless you begin first to abuse me about the Romans. 
If you begin that, the peroration will be a very pathetic one, in 
my being turned out of your doors. Such is my prophecy. 

" Papa has been telling me of your abusing my stanzas on Mrs. 
Hemans's death. I had a presentiment that you would. . . ." 

If the classic lore and ponderous scholarship unfitted Mr. 
Boyd to feel the loveHness of this lyric, those who enter 
into its pathos may find some compensation for not being 
great classicists. It is in this poem that the lines occur, — 

"Nor mourn, O living One, because her part in life was mourning: 
Would she have lost the poet's fire, for anguish of the burning? 

Albeit softly in our ears her silver song was ringing, 

The foot-fall of her parting soul is softer than her singing." 



46 THE BROWNINGS 

Miss Barrett's fugitive poems of this time tell much of 
the story of her days. She sees Haydon's portrait of 
Wordsworth, and it suggests the sonnet beginning: 

"Wordsworth upon Helvellyn! ..." 

The poems written previously to "A Drama of Exile " 
do not at all indicate the power and beauty and the depth 
of significance for which all her subsequent work is so re- 
markable. "The Seraphim," "Isobel's Child," "The 
Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus," however much they 
may contain occasional glimpses of poetic fire, would never 
have established her rank. Yet "The Sleep " belongs to this 
period, and that poem of exquisite pathos, "Cowper's 
Grave." Anticipating a little, there came that poem which 
awakened England and the modern world, indeed, to a 
sense of the suffering of children in factory life, "The Cry 
of the Children," which appeared almost simultaneously 
with Lord Shaftesbury's great speech in Parliament on 
child labor. The poem and the statesman and philan- 
thropist together aroused England. 

A poem called "Confessions" is full of a mysterious 
power that haunts the reader in a series of pictures: 

"Face to face in my chamber, my silent chamber, I saw her: 
God and she and I only, there I sate down to draw her 
Soul through the clefts of confession — ' Speak, I am holding thee 

fast. 
As the angel of resurrection shall do at the last.'" 

And what touching significance is in these Hnes: 

"The least touch of their hands in the morning, I keep it by day 
and by night; 
Their least step on the stair, at the door, still throbs through me, 
if ever so light." 

There were the "Crowned and Wedded " that celebrated 
the marriage of England's beloved queen; "Bertha in the 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 47 

Lane," which has been one of the most universal favorites 
of any of her lyrics; still later, "The Dead Pan," which 
essentially embodies her highest convictions regarding the 
poetic art: that Poetry must be real, and, above all, true. 

"O brave poets, keep back nothing, 
Nor mix falsehood with the whole! 



Hold, in high poetic duty, 
Truest Truth the fairest Beauty! 



In such lines as these she expressed her deepest feeling. 

Then appeared "Comfort," "Futurity," and "An Ap- 
prehension"; the dainty little picture of her childish days 
in "Hector in the Garden"; the sonnets to George Sand, on 
which the French biographer ^ of Mrs. Browning, in recent 
years, has commented, translating the first hne, — 

" Vrai genie, mats vraiefemmel " 

and adding that these words, addressed to George Sand, 
are illustrated by her own Ufe. 

The sonnet "Insufficiency," of this period, closes with 
the Unes, 

"And what we best conceive we fail to speak. 
Wait, soul, untU thine ashen garments fall, 
And then resume thy broken strains, and seek 
Fit peroration without let or thrall." 

In all this work that deep religious note, that exaltation 
of spirituality which so completely characterized Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning, is felt by the reader. Religion was 
always to her a life, not a litany. The Divine Love was 
as the breath of life to her, wherein she Uved and moved, 
and on which she relied for her very being. 

The poem called "A Rhapsody of Life's Progress," though 

' La Vie et TcEuvre de Elizabeth Browning, par Germaine-Marie Mer- 
lette; Licencie des lettres; Docteur de I'Universit^ de Paris. 



48 THE BROWNINGS 

not often noted by the critical writers on Mrs. Browning, 
is one full of impressive lines, with that haunting refrain 
of every stanza, — 

"O Life, O Beyond, 
Thou art strange, thou art sweet!" 

Albeit, a candid view must also recognize that this poem 
reveals those early faults, the redundancy, the almost reck- 
lessness of color and rhythm, that are much less frequently 
encountered in the poems of Mrs. Browning than they 
were in those of Miss Barrett. For poetic work is an art 
as well as a gift, and while "Poets are born, not made." yet, 
being born, the poet must proceed also to make himself. 
In this "Rhapsody " occur the lines that are said to have 
thrown cultured Bostonians into a bewilderment excep- 
tional; a baffled and despairing state not to be duplicated 
in all history, unless by that of the Greeks before the Eleu- 
sinian mysteries; the lines running, — 

"Let us sit on the thrones 
In a purple sublimity, 
And grind down men's bones 
To a pale unanimity." 

Polite circles in Boston pondered unavailingly upon this 
medley, and were apparently reduced to the same mental 
condition as was Mrs. Carlyle when she read "Sordello." 
Unfortunately for Jane Carlyle there were in her day no 
Browning societies, with their all-embracing knowledge, to 
which Browning himself conveniently referred all persons 
who questioned him as to the meaning of certain passages. 
One Boston woman, not unknown to fame, recalls even 
now that she walked the Common, revolving these cryptic 
lines in her mind, and meeting Dr. Holmes, asked if 
he understood them, to which the Autocrat replied, "God 
forbid!" 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 49 

This very affluence of feeling, however, or even reckless- 
ness of imagery, was not without its place as a chastened 
and subdued factor in the power of Miss Barrett later on. 
From her earUest childhood she had the scholar's instinct 
and love of learning; she read fluently French, German, 
and ItaUan; she was well grounded in Latin, and for the 
Greek she had that impassioned love that made its Htera- 
ture to her an assimilation rather than an acquirement. 
Its rich intellectual treasure entered into her inmost life. 
She also read Hebrew, and all her hfe kept with her a little 
Hebrew Bible, as well as a Greek Testament, the margins 
of both of which are filled with her notes and commentaries 
in her clear, microscopic handwriting. Miss Barrett's 
earliest work, published anonymously, at her father's ex- 
pense, rather to gratify himself and a few friends than to 
make any appeal to the public, had no special claim to lit- 
erary immortaHty, whatever its promise; but once in Lon- 
don, something in the very atmosphere seemed to act as a 
solvent to precipitate her nebulous dreams and crystallize 
them into definite and earnest aims. Poetry had always 
been to her "its own exceeding great reward," but she was 
now conscious of a desire to enter into the stress and storm 
of the professional writer, who must sink or swim, accept 
the verdict of success or failure, and launch forth on that 
career whose very hardships and uncertainties are a part of 
its fascination. To Elizabeth Barrett, secure in her father's 
home, there was little possibility of the hardships and pri- 
vations on the material side not unfrequently incidental 
to the pursuit of letters, but to every serious worker Life 
prefigures itself as something not unlike the Norse heaven 
with its seven floors, each of which must be conquered. 

"Here a star, and there a star, 
Some lose their way, — 
Here a mist, and there a mist, 
Afterwards . . . day!" 



50 THE BROWNINGS 

Miss Barrett finds London "wrapped up like a mummy, 
in a yellow mist," but she tries to like it, and "looks for- 
ward to seeing those here whom we might see nowhere 
else." Her brother George, who had recently graduated 
from the University of Glasgow, was now a barrister stu- 
dent at the Inner Temple. Henrietta and Arabel, the two 
sisters, found interest and deHght in the new surroundings. 

Retrospectively viewed, Mrs. Browning's hfe falls easily 
into three periods, which seem to name themselves as a 
prelude, an interlude, and a realization. She was just past 
her twenty-ninth birthday when the family came up to 
London, and up to that time she had, indeed, lived with 
dreams and visions for her company. These years were but 
the prelude, the preparatory period. She then entered on 
the experimental phase, the testing of her powers, the 
interlude that lay between early promise and later fulfill- 
ment. In her forty-first year came her marriage to Robert 
Browning and the beginning of those nearly fifteen years of 
marvelous achievement, during which the incomparable 
"Sonnets] from the Portuguese" and "Aurora Leigh" 
were written, — the period of realization. 

Before the beginning of the London period Miss Barrett's 
literary work had been largely that of the amateur, though 
in the true meaning of that somewhat misused term, as the 
lover, rather than as merely the more or less crude experi- 
menter. For Poetry to Elizabeth Barrett was a divine 
commission no less than an inborn gift. Under any cir- 
cumstances, she would have poured her life "with pas- 
sion into music," and with the utmost sincerity could she 
have said, with George Eliot's "Armgart," 

"I am not glad with that mean vanity 
Which knows no good beyond its appetite 
Full feasting upon praise! I am only glad, 
Being praised for what I know is worth the praise; 
Glad of the proof that I myself have part 
In what I worship!" 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 51 

As is revealed and attested in many expressions of her 
maturer years, Poetry was to her the most serious, as well 
as the most enthralling, of pursuits, while she was also a 
very accomplished scholar. A special gift, and a faciUty 
for the acquirement of scholarly knowledge in the academic 
sense, do not invariably go together; often is the young 
artist so bewitched with his gift, so entranced with the 
glory and the splendor of a dream, that the text-book, by 
contrast, is a dull page, to which he cannot persuade himself 
to turn. To him the air is peopled with visions and voices 
that fascinate his attention. In the college days of James 
Russell Lowell is seen an illustration of this truth, the 
young student being temporarily suspended, and sent — 
not to Coventry, but to Concord. Perhaps the banishment 
of a Harvard student for the high crime and misdemeanor 
of being addicted to rhjrme rather than mathematics, and 
his penalty in the form of exile to Concord, the haunt of 
Emerson and the Muses, may have made Pan laugh. But, 
at all events. Miss Barrett was as naturally a scholar, in the 
fullest significance of the term, as she was a poet. This 
splendid equipment was a tremendous factor in that 
splendor of achievement, and in that universally recognized 
success, that has made the name of Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning immortal in all ages, as the greatest woman poet 
the world has ever known. 

The professional literary life is a drama in itself, — com- 
edy, or tragedy, as may be, and usually a mixture of both. 
It ranges over wide areas of experience, from that of the 
author of "Richard Feverel," who is said to have written 
that novel on a diet of oatmeal and cold water, to that of 
the luxurious author whose seances with the Muses are 
decorously conducted in irreproachable interiors, with 
much garnishing, old rose and ivory, ebony carvings, and 
inlaid desks, at which the marvelous being who now and 
then condescends to "dictate " a " best seller," is apt to 



52 THE BROWNINGS 

be surprised by a local photographer. But as a noted edu- 
cator defined a University as "a. log, — with Mark Hop- 
kins sitting on the other end," so the "real thing " in a 
literary career may not inaptly be typified by Louisa Al- 
cott sitting on the back stairs, writing on an old atlas; and 
it was into actualities somewhat like these that Elizabeth 
Barrett desired to plunge. The question that she voiced 
in later years, in "Aurora Leigh," — 

" My own best poets, am I one with you, 
That thus I love you, — or but one through love? 
Does all this smell of thyme about my feet 
Conclude my visit to your holy hill 
In personal presence, or but testify 
The rustling of your vesture through my dreams 
With influent odours?" — 

this question, in substance, stirred now in her life, and in- 
sisted upon reply. She must, like all real poets, proceed 
to "hang her verses in the wind," and watch if perchance 
there are 

". . . the five 
Which five hundred will survive." 

Elizabeth Barrett was of a simplicity that had no affini- 
ties with the poseur in any respect, and she had an inimi- 
table sense of humor that pervaded all her days. Wit and 
pathos are, indeed, so closely allied that it would be hardly 
possible that the author of the "De Profundis," a poem 
that sounds the profoundest depths of the human soul, 
should not have the corresponding quality of the swiftest 
perception of the humorous. It was somewhere about this 
time that Poe sent to her a volume of his poems with an 
inscription on the fly-leaf that declared her to be "the 
noblest of her sex." 

"And what could I say in reply," she laughingly re- 



THEIR LIFE AND ART S3 

marked, "but *Sir, you are the most discerning of 
yours!'" 

The first poem of hers that was offered in a purely pro- 
fessional way was " The Romaunt of Margret." It appeared 
in the New Monthly Magazine, then edited by Bulwer, who 
was afterward known as the first Lord Lytton. At this 
time Richard Hengist Home was basking in the fame of 
his "Orion," and to him Miss Barrett applied, through a 
mutual friend, as to whether her enclosed poem had any 
title to that name, or whether it was mere verse. "As 
there could be no doubt in the mind of the recipient on 
that point," said Mr. Home, "the poem was forwarded to 
Bulwer, and duly appeared. The next one sent," continues 
Mr. Home, "started the poetess at once on her bright and 
noble career." This "next one " appears to have been 
"The Poet's Vow," and a confirmation of this supposition 
is seen in a letter of hers at this date to Mr. Boyd, in which 
she explains her not having at hand a copy of the AthencBum 
that he had wished to see, and adds: 

"I can give you, from memory, the Athencmni's review in 
that number. The critic says * It is rich in poetry . . . includ- 
ing a fine, although too dreamy, ballad. The Poet's Vow. We 
are almost tempted to pause and criticise the work of an artist 
of so much inspiration and promise as the author of this poem, 
and to exhort him to a greater clearness of expression, and less 
quaintness in the choice of his phraseology, but this is not the 
time or place for digression.' 

"You see my critic has condemned me with a very gracious 
countenance. Do put on yours." 

Again, under date of October, 1836, she writes to Mr. 
Boyd: 

"... But what will you say to me when I confess that in 
the face of all your kind encouragement, my Drama of the 



54 THE BROWNINGS 

Angels (The Seraphim) has not been touched until the last 
three days? It was not out of pure idleness on my part, nor 
of disregard to your admonition; but when my thoughts were 
distracted with other things, books just began enclosing me all 
around, a whole load of books upon my conscience, and I could 
not possibly rise to the gate of heaven and write about my 
angels. You know one can't sometimes sit down to the sub- 
lunary occupation of even reading Greek, unless one feels free 
to it. And writing poetry requires a double liberty, and an 
inclination which comes only of itself. . . . 

"... I have had another note from the editor — very flatter- 
ing, and praying for farther supplies. The 'Angels' were not 
ready, and I was obliged to send something else." 

A discussion arises in the family regarding the taking of 
a house in Wimpole Street, and Elizabeth remarks that for 
her part she would rather go on inhabiting castles in the 
air than to live in that particular house, "whose walls 
look so much like Newgate's turned inside out." She con- 
tinues, however, that if it is decided upon, she has little 
doubt she will wake and sleep very much as she would any- 
where else. With a strong will, and an intense, resistless 
kfnd of energy in holding any conviction, and an indepen- 
dence of character only equalled by its preeminent justice 
and generous magnanimity, she was singularly free from 
any tenacious insistence upon the matters of external life. 
She had her preferences; but she always accommodated 
herself to the decision or the necessity of the hour, and 
there was an end of it. She had that rare power of instan- 
taneous mental adjustment; and if a given thing were right 
and best, or if it were not best but was still inevitable, she 
accepted it and did not make hfe a burden to every one 
concerned by endless discussion. 

London itself did not captivate her fancy. "Did Dr. 
Johnson in his paradise in Fleet Street love the pave- 
ments and the walls?" she questioned. "I doubt that," 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 55 

she added; "the place, the privileges, don't mix in one's 
love as is done by the hills and the seaside." 

The privileges, however, became more and more inter- 
esting to her. One of these was when she met Wordsworth, 
whom she describes as being "very kind," and that he "let 
her hear his conversation." 

This conversation she did not find "prominent," for she 
saw at the same time Landor, "the brilliant Landor," she 
notes, and felt the difference "between great genius and 
eminent talent." But there was a day on which she went to 
Chiswick with Wordsworth and Miss Mitford, and all the 
way she thought she must be dreaming. It was Landor, 
though, who captivated her fancy at once, as he already 
had that of her future poet-lover and husband, who was 
yet unrevealed to her. Landor, "in whose hands the ashes 
of antiquity burn again," she writes, gave her two Greek 
epigrams he had recently written. All this time she is read- 
ing everything, — Sheridan Knowles's play of "The Wreck- 
ers," which Forrest had rejected, "rather for its unfitness 
to his own personal talent than for its abstract demerit," 
she concludes; and "Ion," which she finds beautiful mor- 
ally rather than intellectually, and thinks that, as dramatic 
poetry, it lacks power, passion, and condensation. Read- 
ing Combe's "Phrenology," she refers to his theory that 
slowness of the pulse is a sign of the poetical impulse. If 
this be true, she fears she has no hope of being a poet, "for 
my pulse is in a continual flutter," she notes; and she 
explains to Mr. Boyd that the line 

"One making one in strong compass" 

in "The Poet's Vow," which he found incomprehensible, 
really means that "the oneness of God, ' in Whom are all 
things," produces a oneness, or sympathy, with all things. 
The unity of God preserves a unity in man." 
All in all, Miss Barrett is coming to enjoy her London 



56 THE BROWNINGS 

life. There was the Royal Academy, "and real live poets, 
with their heads full of the trees and birds, and sunshine 
of Paradise " ; and she has " stood face to face with Words- 
worth and Landor"; Miss Mitford has become a dear 
friend, but she visits London only at intervals, as she lives 
— shades of benighted days ! — thirty miles from London. 
A twentieth century residence across the continent could 
hardly seem more remote. 

The removal to Wimpole Street was decided upon, and 
to that house (No. 50) , gloomy or the reverse, the Barretts 
migrated. Miss Barrett's new book, under the title of " The 
Seraphim and Other Poems," was pubUshed, marking her 
first professional appearance before the public over her 
own name. "I feel very nervous about it," she said; "far 
more than I did when my 'Prometheus' crept out of the 
Greek." 

Mr. Kenyon was about to go to Rydal Mount on a visit 
to Wordsworth, and Miss Barrett begs him to ask, as for 
himself, two garden cuttings of myrtle or geranium, and 
send to her — two, that she may be sure of saving one. 

Autographs had value in those days, and in a note to 
Mr. Bray Miss Barrett alludes to one of Shakespeare's 
that had been sold for a hundred pounds and asks if he 
feels sure of the authenticity of his own Shakespearean 
autograph. 

A new poetic era had dawned about the time that " The 
Seraphim" appeared. Tennyson had written "Audley 
Court," and was beginning to be known in America, owing 
this first introduction to Emerson, who visited Landor in 
Florence and made some sojourn afterward in England. 
The Boston publishing house of C. C. Little and Company 
(now Little, Brown, and Company) had. written to Tenny- 
son (under date of April 27, 1838) regarding a republish- 
ing of his volume, as the future laureate was already recog- 
nized for the musical quality and perfection of art in his 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 57 

work. Browning had published only "Pauline," "Para- 
celsus," and "Strafford," Shelley and Keats were dead, 
their mortal remains reposing in the beautiful English 
cemetery in Rome, under the shadow of the tall cypresses, 
by the colossal pyramid of Caius Cestus. Byron and Scott 
and Coleridge had also died. There were Landor and 
Southey, Rogers and Campbell; but with Miss Barrett 
there came upon the scene a new minstrelsy that compelled 
its own recognition. Some of her shorter poems had caught 
the popular ear; notably, her "Cowper's Grave," which 
remains, to-day, one of her most appealing and exquisite 
lyrics. 

"It is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying; 
It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying." 

The touching pathos of the line, 

"O Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging! " 

moves every reader. And what music and touching appeal 
in the succeeding stanza : 

"And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his 

story. 
How discord on the music fell and darkness on the glory, 
And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights 

departed. 
He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted." 

In seeing, "on Cowper's grave, ... his rapture in a 
vision," Miss Barrett pictured his strength — 

"... to sanctify the poet's high vocation." 

Her reverence for poetic art finds expression in almost 
every poem that she has written. 

Among other shorter poems included with "The Sera- 
phim " were "The Poet's Vow," "Isobel's Child," and 



58 THE BROWNINGS 

others, including, also, "The Romauntof Margret." The 
AthencBum pronounced the collection an "extraordinary 
volume, — especially welcome as an evidence of female 
genius and accomplishment, — but hardly less disappoint- 
ing than extraordinary. Miss Barrett's genius is of a high 
order," the critic conceded; but he found her language 
"wanting in simplicity." One reviewer castigated her for 
presuming to take such a theme as "The Seraphim " "from 
which Milton would have shrank!" All the critics agree in 
giving her credit for genius of no ordinary quality; but 
the general consensus of opinion was that this genius mani- 
fested itself unevenly, that she was sometimes led into 
errors of taste. That she was ever intentionally obscure, 
she denied. "Unfortunately obscure" she admitted that 
she might be, but "willingly so, — never." 

Of the personal friends of Elizabeth Barrett one of the 
nearest was Mary Russell Mitford, who was nineteen years 
her senior. Miss Mitford describes her at the time of their 
meeting a having "such a look of youthfulness that she 
had some difficulty in persuading a friend that Miss Barrett 
was old enough to be introduced into society." Miss Mit- 
ford added that she was "certainly one of the most inter- 
esting persons " she had ever seen; "of a shght, delicate 
figure, . . . large, tender eyes, and a smile like a sunbeam." 

Mr. Kenyon brought Andrew Crosse, a noted electrician 
of the day, to see Miss Barrett; and in some reminiscences ^ 
written by Mrs. Andrew Crosse there is a chapter on "John 
Kenyon and his Friends " that offers the best comprehen- 
sion, perhaps, of this man who was so charming and be- 
loved a figure in London society, — a universal favorite. 
Born in 1784 in Jamaica, the son of a wealthy land-owner, 
he was sent to England as a lad, educated there, and 
in 18 1 5 he set out for a tour of the continent. In 181 7, in 

* Red Letter Days of my Life. London: Richard Bentley and Son. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 59 

Paris, he met and became intimate with Professor George 
Ticknor of Harvard University, the Spanish historian; and 
through this friendship Mr. Kenyon came to know many of 
the distinguished Americans of the day, including Emer- 
son, Longfellow, and Willis. Coleridge, Southey, Words- 
worth, and Landor were among Kenyon's most intimate 
circle; and there is a record of one of his dinners at which 
the guests were Daniel Webster, Professor and Mrs. Tick- 
nor, Dickens, Montalembert, and Lady Mary Shepherd. 
In 1823 Kenyon married Miss Curteis, and they lived for 
some years in Devonshire Place, with frequent interludes 
of travel on the continent. Mrs. Kenyon died in 1835, but 
w^hen the Barretts came up to London Kenyon had resumed 
his delightful hospitalities, of which he made fairly a fine 
art. Professor Ticknor has left an allusion to another 
dinner at Kenyon's where he met Miss Barrett. In the 
autumn of 1839 Miss Barrett, accompanied by her brother 
Edward, went to Torquay, for the warmer climate, and Mr. 
Kenyon also had gone there for the winter, ■■/'round him 
were gathered a group of notable friends, with whom Miss 
Barrett, his cousin (with one remove), was constantly 
associated, — Landor, Andrew Crosse, Theodosia Garrow 
(afterwards the wife of Thomas Adolphus Trollope), and 
Bezzi, an accomplished ItaHan, who was afterward asso- 
ciated with Seymour Kirkup in discovering Dante's por- 
trait concealed under the whitewash applied to the walls of 
the Bargello in Florence. Miss Barrett was at this time 
entering into that notable correspondence with Richard 
Hengist Home, many of these letters containing passages 
of interest. For instance, of poetry we find her saying : 

*Tf poetry under any form be exhaustible, Nature is; and if 
Natiure is, we are near a blasphemy, and I, for one, could not 
believe in the immortality of the soul. 

* Si I'ame est immortelle, 
V amour ne I'est-il-pas?' 



6o THE BROWNINGS 

Extending V amour into all love of the ideal, and attendant power 
of idealizing. ... I don't believe in mute, inglorious Miltons, 
and far less in mute, inglorious Shakespeares." 

Referring to some correspondence with Miss Martineau, 
Miss Barrett characterizes her as ''the noblest female in- 
telligence between the seas," and of Tennyson, in relation 
to some mention of him, she wrote that "if anything were 
to happen to Tennyson, the whole world should go into 
mourning." 

A project (said to have originated with Wordsworth) 
was launched to "modernize " Chaucer, in which Miss 
Barrett, Leigh Hunt, Monckton Milnes, Mr. Home, and 
one or two others enthusiastically united, the only dis- 
senter being Landor, who characteristically observed that 
any one who was fit to read Chaucer at all could read him in 
the original. Later on the co-operation of Browning, Ten- 
nyson, Talfourd, Bulwer, Mary Howitt, and the Cowden 
Clarkes was solicited and in part obtained. But Landor 
held firm, and of his beloved Chaucer he said: "I will have 
no hand in breaking his dun, but rich-painted glass, to put 
in thinner (if clearer) panes. " A great deal of correspond- 
ence ensued in connection with this Herculean labor, most of 
which is of less interest to the general reader than it might 
well be to the literary antiquarian. 

The next special literary enthusiasm of Mr. Home and 
Miss Barrett was the projecticm of a work of criticism, to 
be issued anonymously, and entitled "The New Spirit of 
the Age." They collaborated on the critique on Words- 
worth and Leigh Hunt, and for the one on Landor Miss 
Barrett was mainly responsible, in which she says he 
"writes poetry for poets, and criticism for critics; . . . and 
as if poetry were not, in English, a sufiiciently unpopular dead 
language, he has had recourse to writing poetry in Latin." 
She speaks of his "Pericles and Aspasia" and his "Pentam- 
eron " as "books for the world and for all time, complete 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 6i 

in beauty of sentiment and subtlety of criticism." Two 
of Lander's works, very little known, the "Poems from 
the Arabic and Persian" and "A Satire upon Satirists," 
are here noted. "It will be delightful to me to praise 
Tennyson, — although, by Saint Eloy, I never imitated 
him," she writes to Mr. Home; "and I take that oath be- 
cause the Quarterly was sure that if it had not been for him 
I should have hung a lady's hair * blackly ' instead of * very 
blackly.'" Miss Mitford was somewhat concerned with 
this hazardous venture, but she had no desire to discuss 
Dickens, as she "could not admire his love of low life!" 
Miss Barrett's appreciation of Tennyson is much on record. 
She finds him "a divine poet." Monckton Milnes, whose 
first work she liked extremely, seemed to her in his later 
poems as wanting in fire and imagination, and as being too 
didactic. Barry Cornwall's lyrics impressed her "like 
embodied music." Mr. Home finally wrote the critique on 
Dickens, and of it Miss Barrett said: "I think the only 
omission of importance in your admirable essay is the omis- 
sion of the influence of the French school of imaginative 
literature upon the mind of Dickens, which is manifest and 
undeniable. . . . Did you ever read the powerful Trois 
Jours d'un Condamne, and will you confront that with 
the tragic saliences of ' Ohver Twist' ? . . . We have no 
such romance writer as Victor Hugo . . . George Sand is 
the greatest female genius of the world, at least since 
Sappho." (At this time George Eliot had not appeared.) 
Miss Barrett appreciatively alludes to Sir Henry Taylor 
(the author of "Philip van Artevelde") as "an infidel in 
poetry," and to the author of " Festus" as "a man of great 
thoughts." She finds part of the poem "weak," but, "when 
all is said," she continues, " what poet-stuff remains! what 
power! what fire of imagination, worth the stealing of 
Prometheus!" 

In relation to some strictures on Carlyle, Miss Barrett 



62 THE BROWNINGS 

vivaciously replies that his object is to discover the sun, 
not to specify the landscape, and that it would be a strange 
reproach to bring against the morning star that it does not 
shine in the evening. 

The idea of a lyrical drama, "Psyche Apocalypte," was 
entertained by Mr. Home and Miss Barrett, but, for- 
tunately, no fragment of it was materialized into public 
light. There was a voluminous correspondence between 
them concerning this possible venture. Meanwhile Miss 
Barrett's poems won success past her "expectation or 
hope. Blackwood's high help was much," she writes, "and 
I continue to have the kindest letters from unknown 
readers. . . . The American publisher has printed fifteen 
hundred copies. If I am a means of ultimate loss to him, 
I shall sit in sackcloth." 

In another of her letters to Mr. Home we read that 
Wordsworth is in a fever because of a projected railroad 
through the Lake Country, and that Carlyle calls Harriet 
Martineau "quite mad," because of her belief in Mesmer- 
ism. "For my own part," adds Miss Barrett, "I am not 
afraid to say that I almost believe in Mesmerism, and 
quite believe in Harriet Martineau." She is delighted that 
Home's "Orion" is to be published in New York. "I 
love the Americans," she asserts, "a noble and cordial 
people." 

Miss Barrett remained for three years in Torquay, the 
climate being regarded as better for her health. But the 
tragedy of her life took place there in the drowning of her 
brother Edward, who went out one day with two friends in 
a boat and never returned. Three days later the boat was 
found floating, overturned, and the bodies of the three 
young men were recovered. This sad event occurred in the 
August of 1840, and it was more than a year before 
she was able to resume her literary work and her corre- 
spondence. In the September of 1841 she returned to 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 63 

London, and in a letter to Mr. Boyd soon after she replied 
to his references to Gregory as a poet, saying she has not 
much admiration even for his grand De Virginitate, and 
chiefly regards him as one who is only poetical in prose. 

Miss Barrett's delicacy of health through all these years 
has been so universally recorded (and, according to her 
own words, so exaggerated) that it needs no more than 
passing allusion here. So far as possible she herself ignored 
it, and while it was always a factor to be reckoned with, 
yet her boundless mental energy tided her over illness and 
weakness to a far greater degree than has usually been 
realized. "My time goes to the best music when I read 
or write," she says, "and whatever money I can spend 
upon my own pleasures flows away in books." 

Elizabeth Barrett was the most sjrmpathetic and af- 
fectionate of friends, and her devotion to literature re- 
sulted in no mere academic and abnormal life. Her letters 
are filled with all the little inquiries and interests of house- 
hold affection and sweetness of sympathy with the per- 
sonal matters of relatives and friends, and if those are not 
here represented, it is simply that they are in their nature 
colloquial, and to be taken for granted rather than repeated 
for reading, when so long separated by time from the con- 
ditions and circumstances that called them forth. She was 
glad to return from Torquay to her family again. "Papa's 
domestic comfort is broken up by the separation," she said, 
"and the associations of Torquay lie upon me, struggle 
against them as I may, Uke a nightmare. , . . Part of me 
is worn out; but the poetical part — that is, the love of 
poetry — is growing in me as freshly every day. Did any- 
body ever love poetry and stop in the middle? I wonder 
if any one ever could? . . . besides, I am becoming better. 
Dear Mr, Boyd," she entreats, "do not write another word 
about my illness either to me or to others. I am sure you 
would not willingly disturb me. I can't let . . . prescribe 



64 THE BROWNINGS 

anything for me except her own afifection." These words 
illustrate the spirit in which Miss Barrett referred to her 
own health. No one could be more remote from a morbid 
invalidism too often associated with her. 

One of her first efforts after her return from Torquay was 
to send to the Athenmum some Greek translations, which, 
to her surprise, were accepted, and she writes to Mr. Boyd 
that she would enclose to him the editor's letter "if it were 
legible to anybody except people used to learn reading from 
the Pyramids." It must have been due to a suggestion 
from the editor of the Athenceum at this time that she wrote 
her noble and affluent essay on "The Greek Christian 
Poets," which is perhaps her finest work in prose. Some- 
thing in the courteous editorial note suggested this to her, 
and she discusses the idea with Mr. Boyd. 

Mr. Dilke was then the editor of the AthencBum. He 
quite entered into the idea of this essay, only begging Miss 
Barrett to keep away from theology. Mr. Dilke also 
suggests that she write a review of English poetical litera- 
ture, from Chaucer to contemporary times, and this initi- 
ated her essay called "The Book of the Poets." For her 
Greek review she desired a copy of the PoetcB Christiani, 
but found the price (fourteen guineas) ruinous. But 
whether she had all the needful data or not, the first 
paper was a signal success, and she fancied that some bona 
avis, as good as a nightingale, had shaken its wings over 
her. Of the three Greek tragedians, -^schylus, Euripides, 
and Sophocles, Elizabeth Barrett had read every Une. 
Plato she loved and read exhaustively; of Aristotle at this 
time she had read his Ethics, Poetics, and his work on 
Rhetoric, and of Aristophanes a few, only, of his plays. 
But Miss Barrett was also a great novel-reader, keeping her 
"pillows stuffed with novels," as she playfully declared. 
Her room, in the upper part of the house, revealed the haunt 
of the scholar. Upon a bracket the bust of Homer looked 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 65 

down; her bookcase showed one entire shelf occupied by the 
Greek poets; another relegated wholly to the English poets; 
and philosophy, ethics, science, and criticism were liberally 
represented. A bust of Chaucer companioned that of Homer. 
By her sofa nestled Flush, her dog, Miss Mitford's gift. 

It was in this year of 1841 that there penetrated into her 
atmosphere and consciousness the first intimation of Robert 
Browning. "Pippa Passes " had just been published, and 
John Kenyon, ever alert to bring any happiness into the 
lives of his friends (Kenyon, "the joy-giver," as he was 
well termed), suggested introducing the young poet to her, 
but on the plea of her ill-health she declined. A little later, 
in a letter to Mr. Boyd, she mentions one or two comments 
made on her essay, "The Greek Christian Poets," — that 
Mr. Home, and also "Mr. Browning, the poet," had both, 
as she was told, expressed approval. " Mr. Browning is said 
to be learned in Greek," she adds, "especially the drama- 
tists." So already the air begins to stir and tremble with 
the coming of him of whom in later days she wrote: 

"I yield the grave for thy sake, and resign 
My near sweet view of heaven for earth with thee." 

The entrancing thrill of that wonderful Wagner music 
that ushers in the first appearance of the knight in the 
music-drama of "Lohengrin " is typical of the vibrations 
that thrill the air in some etherial announcement of expe- 
riences that are on the very threshold, and which are recog- 
nized by a nature as sensitive and impressionable as was 
that of EHzabeth Barrett. A new element with its trans- 
figuring power awaited her, and some undefined prescience 
of that 

"... most gracious singer of high poems" 

whose music was to fall at her door 

". . . in folds of golden fulness" 
haunted her like "an odor from Dreamland sent." 



66 THE BROWNINGS 

She pondered on 

"... how Theocritus had sung 
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years," 

but she dared not dream that the "mystic Shape" that 
drew her backward, and whose voice spoke "in mastery," 
had come to lead her, — not to Death, but Love. 



CHAPTER V 
1841-1846 

". . . If a man co\ild feel, 
Not one day in the artist's ecstasy, 
But every day, — feast, fast, or working-day, 
The spiritual significance burn through 
The hieroglyphic of material shows. 
Henceforward he would paint the globe with wings." 

" Bells and Pomegranates " — Arnould Aim Domett — "A 
Blot in the 'Scutcheon " — Macready — Second Visit 
TO Italy — Miss Barrett's Poetic Work — " Colombe's 
Birthday " — "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" — "Romances 
AND Lyrics " — Browning's First Letter to Miss Bar- 
rett — The Poets Meet — Letters or Robert Brown- 
ing AND Elizabeth Barrett — "Loves of the Poets" — 
Vita Nuova. 

The appearance of "Bells and Pomegranates " made a 
deep impression on Elizabeth Barrett, as the numbers, 
opening with "Pippa Passes," successively appeared be- 
tween 1 84 1 and 1846. Of "Pippa " she said she could find 
it in her heart to covet the authorship, and she felt all the 
combinations of effect to be particularly "striking and 
noble." In a paper that Miss Barrett wrote in these days 
for the Athen(Bum, critically surveying the poetic outlook 
of the time, she referred to Browning and Tennyson as 
"among those high and gifted spirits who would still work 
and wait." When this London journal reviewed (not too 
favorably) Browning's "Romances and Lyrics," Miss 
Barrett took greatly to heart the injustice that she felt 
was done him, and reverted to it in a number of personal 



68 THE BROWNINGS 

letters, expressing her conviction that "it would be easier 
to find a more faultless writer than a poet of equal genius." 
An edition of Tennyson, in two volumes, came out, includ- 
ing the ''Ulysses," *'Morte d'Arthur," "Locksley Hall," 
and "CEnone," of which she says no one quite appeals to 
her as does "CEnone," and she expresses her beUef that 
philosophic thinking, Uke music, is always involved in high 
ideality of any kind. Wordsworth she insisted upon esti- 
mating from his best, not from his poorest work, and his 
"Ode " was to her so grand as to atone for a multitude of 
poetic sins. " I confess," she wrote to Boyd, " that he is not 
unfrequently heavy and dull, and that Coleridge has an in- 
tenser genius." To her cousin, Kenyon, Miss Barrett sent 
the manuscript of her poem, "The Dead Pan," which he 
showed to Browning, who wrote of it to Kenyon with ardent 
admiration. This note was sent to Miss Barrett, who dis- 
played it to Home that he might see the opinion of the poet 
whom they both admired. Still later. Home pubHshed in 
his "New Spirit of the Age " sketches of several writers 
with their portraits; and those of Carlyle, Miss Martineau, 
Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning, Miss Barrett had 
framed for her own room. She asked Kenyon if that of 
Browning were a good one. "Rather Uke," he repHed. So 
here and there the Fates were invisibly at work, forging 
the subtle threads that were drawing the poets uncon- 
sciously nearer. 

It was the suggestion of Browning's publisher, Moxon, 
that "Bells and Pomegranates " might be issued in pam- 
phlet form, appearing at intervals, as this plastic method 
would be comparatively inexpensive, and would also per- 
mit the series to be stopped at any time if its success was 
not of a degree to warrant continuance. The poet found 
his title, as he afterward explained in a letter to Miss Bar- 
rett, in Exodus, "... upon the hem of the robe thou 
shali: make pomegranates of blue and of purple, and of 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 69 

scarlet, and bells of gold between them round about." 
After "Pippa Passes" there followed *'King Victor and 
King Charles," a number of Lyrics, **The Return of the 
Druses," "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon," ''Luria," and "A 
Soul's Tragedy." On each of the title-pages the author was 
named as the writer of ''Paracelsus," "Sordello" being 
ignored. Among the dedications of these several numbers 
those so honored included John Kenyon, Proctor, and 
Talfourd. 

Browning offered "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" to 
Macready (whose stage fortunes at this period were not 
brilliant), with the remark that "The luck of the third 
venture is proverbial." The actor consulted Forster, who 
passed the play on to Dickens, to whom it deeply appealed. 
Under date of November 25, 1842, Dickens wrote of it to 
Forster in the most enthusiastic words, saying the reading 
of it had thrown him ''into a perfect passion of sorrow," 
and that it was "full of genius, natural, and great thoughts, 
. . . and I swear it is a tragedy that must be played, and 
played by Macready," continued the novelist. "And tell 
Browning that I believe from my soul there is no man Uving 
(and not many dead) who could produce such a work." 
Forster did not, however, administer this consolation to 
the young author, who was only to learn of Dickens's ad- 
miration thirty years later, when Forster's biography of 
him appeared. The story of the production of the play is 
told in a letter from Joseph Arnould to Alfred Domett 
(then in New Zealand), written under date of May, 1843, 
dated from Arnould's home in Victoria Square, Pimlico: 

"As one must begin somewhere, suppose we take Browning. 
... In February his play, 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon,' was an- 
nounced as forthcoming at Drury Lane. . . . Meantime, judi- 
cious friends had a habit of asking when the play was coming 
out. . . ."1 

1 "Letters of Robert Browning and Alfred Domett." New York: Dodd, 
Mead, and Company. 



70 THE BROWNINGS 

A long chapter of vexations is humorously described by 
Domett, who concludes his letter with this tribute to the 
play. 

"... With some of the finest situations and grandest pas- 
sages you can conceive, it does undoubtedly want a sustained 
interest to the end of the third act; in fact the whole of that 
act on the stage is a falling off from the second, which I need 
not tell you is, for purposes of performance, the most unpardon- 
able fault. Still, it will no doubt — nay, it must — have done 
this, viz., produced a higher opinion than ever of Browning's 
genius and the great things he is yet to do, in the minds not 
only of a clique, but of the general world of readers. This man 
will go far yet. ..." 

While this vexation cancelled the friendly relations that 
had existed between Browning and Macready, it fostered 
the friendship between the poet and Helen Faucit (later 
Lady Martin), who remembered Browning's attitude "as 
full of generous sympathy " for the actors of the cast; 
while he recalled Miss Faucit's "perfect behavior as a 
woman, and her admirable playing, as the one gratifying 
factor " in the affair. But Browning was too noble by 
nature for any lasting resentment, and meeting Macready 
soon after the death of both his own wife, in Italy, and of 
Mrs. Macready, he could only grasp his old friend's hand 
and exclaim with emotion, "Oh, Macready!" 

In the autumn of 1844 Browning set forth for Italy on 
his second visit. Two years before his friend Domett had 
left England for New Zealand, commemorated by the 
poet in the lines, — 

"How, forsooth, was I to know it 
If Waring meant to glide away 
Like a ghost at break of day." 

Browning landed at Naples, and there, according to 
Mrs. Orr, he became acquainted with a young Neapolitan, 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 71 

Signer Scotti, who took the bargaining of their tour upon 
himself, after they had agreed to travel together, "and 
now as I write," said Mr. Browning in a letter from his 
Naples hotel to his sister Sarianna, *'I hear him disputing 
our bill. He does not see why we should pay for six wax 
candles when we have used only two." The pair wandered 
over the enchanting shores of all the Naples region, lin- 
gered in Sorrento, drove over the picturesque road toAmalfi, 
and Hstened to the song of the sirens along the shore. Their 
arrival in Rome was Browning's first sight of the Eternal 
City. Here Mr. Browning found an old friend, the Con- 
tessa Carducci, with whom the two passed most of their 
evenings. He made his poetic pilgrimage to the graves of 
Shelley and Keats, as do all later pilgrims, and he visited 
the grotto of Egeria in memory of Byron. He loitered in 
the old chiesa near Santa Maria Maggiore, where the six- 
teenth century Bishop "ordered his tomb," and he visited 
Trelawney in Leghorn. There exists little record of this 
trip save in the poem "The Englishman in Italy," and his 
return to England through Germany is alike unrecorded. 
Six years had passed since the publication of "The Sera- 
phim and Other Poems," and on Mr. Browning's arrival at 
home again, he found two new volumes of Miss Barrett's, 
entitled simply "Poems," in which were "A Drama of 
Exile," "Bertha in the Lane," "Catarina to Camoens," 
"A Vision of Poets," nearly all of the sonnets that she ever 
wrote save that immortal sequence, "Sonnets from the 
Portuguese," and "Lady Geraldine's Courtship." These 
volumes absolutely estabUshed her poetic rank with that 
of Tennyson and Browning. She "heard the nations 
praising her far off." While she had many expressions of 
grateful gladness for all this chorus of praise with hardly 
a dissenting voice, the verdict did not affect her own high 
standards. " I have written these poems as well as I could," 
she says, "and I hope to write others better. I have not 



72 THE BROWNINGS 

reached my own ideal . . . but I love poetry more than I 
love my own successes in it." 

Her love of absolute truth, and the absence of any petty 
self-love in her character, stand out in any study of her 
life. "Why, if you had told me that my books were with- 
out any value in your eyes, do you imagine that I should 
not have valued you, reverenced you ever after for your 
truth, so sacred a thing in friendship?" she writes to a 
friend. 

The reviews are eminently appreciative and satisfying. 
Blackwood's gave a long critique in a special article, frankly 
pointing out faults, but asserting that her merits far out- 
weighed her defects, and that her genius "was profound, 
unsullied, and without a flaw." The long poem, "A 
Drama of Exile " was pronounced the least successful of 
aU, and the prime favorite was "Lady Geraldine's Court- 
ship." Of this poem of ninety-two stanzas, with eleven 
more in its "Conclusion," thirty-five of the stanzas, or 
one hundred and forty-four lines, were written in one day. 

Though lack of health largely restricted Miss Barrett 
to her room, her sympathies and interests were world- 
wide. She read the reviews of the biography of Dr. Arnold, 
a work she desired to read, entire, and records that "Dr. 
Arnold must have been a man in the largest and noblest 
sense." She rejoices in the refutation of Puseyism that is 
offered in the Edinburgh Review; she reads "an admirable 
paper by Macaulay " in the same number; she comments on 
the news that Newman has united himself with the Catho- 
lic Church; and in one letter she writes that Mr. Home 
has not returned to England and adds: "Mr. Browning is 
not in England, either, so that whatever you send for him 
must await his return from the east, or west, or south, 
wherever he is; Dickens is in Italy; even Miss Mitford 
talks of going to France, and the ' New Spirit of the Age ' 
is a wandering spirit." 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 73 

In her "Lady Geraldine's Courtship " had occurred the 
lines: 

" Or from Browning some ' Pomegranate,' which, if cut deep down 
the middle, 
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity." 

A certain consciousness of each other already stirred in 
the air for Browning and Miss Barrett, and still closer were 
the Fates drawing the subtle threads of destiny. 

It was in this November that Mrs. Jameson first came 
into Miss Barrett's life, coming to the door with a note, 
and "overcoming by kindness was let in." This initi- 
ated a friendship that was destined in the near future to 
play its saUent part in the Hfe of Elizabeth Barrett. In 
what orderly sequence the Hnks of Ufe appear, viewed 
retrospectively! 

She " gently wrangles " with Mr. Boyd for addressing 
her as *' Miss Barrett," deprecating such cold formahty, 
and offering him his choice of her little pet name "Ba " 
or of EUzabeth. 

She reads Hans Christian Andersen's "Improvisatore," 
and in reply to some expressed wonder at her reading so 
many novels she avows herself *'the most complete and 
unscrupulous romance reader " possible; and adds that her 
love of fiction began with her breath, and will end with it; 
"and it goes on increasing. On my tombstone may be 
written," she continued, " ' Ci gU the greatest novel reader 
in the world,' and nobody will forbid the inscription." 

And so the prelude of her life draws to a close, and the 
future is to be no more the mere Uving "with visions for 
her company," for now, in this January of 1845, she has a 
letter from Browning, and she writes: "I had a letter from 
Browning, the poet, last night, which threw me into ecsta- 
sies, — Browning, the author of ' Paracelsus,' and king of 
the mystics." Not long after she writes that she is getting 



74 THE BROWNINGS 

deeper and deeper into correspondence with Robert Brown- 
ing, and that they are growing to be the truest of friends. 
Lowell writes to Miss Barrett regarding her poems, though 
the letter does not seem to be anywhere on record, and she 
writes to Mr. Westwood that in her view Mr. Browning's 
power is of a very high order, and that he must read 
*' Paracelsus." In its author she finds one who "speaks 
true oracles." She finds "Colombe's Birthday" exqui- 
site, and "Pippa Passes" she "kneels to, with deepest 
reverence." 

The first letter of Browning to Miss Barrett was written 
on January lo of this year (1845), and he began with the 
words: "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss 
Barrett." He enters into the "fresh strange music, the 
exquisite pathos, and true, brave thought" of her work; and 
reminds her that Kenyon once asked him if he would Hke 
to see Miss Barrett, but that she did not feel able, and he 
felt as if close to some world's wonder, but the half-opened 
door shut. Her reply, which is dated the next day, thanks 
him for his sympathy and offers him her gratitude, "agree- 
ing that of all the commerce from Tyre to Carthage, the 
exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most princely 
thing." And she craves a lasting obligation in that he shall 
suggest her master-faults in poetry. She does not pretend 
to any extraordinary meekness under criticism, and pos- 
sibly might not be at all obedient to it, but she has such 
high respect for his power in Art, and his experience as an 
artist. She refers to Mr. Kenyon as her friend and helper, 
and her books' friend and helper, "critic and sympathizer, 
true friend at all hours! " and she adds that "while I live 
to follow this divine art of poetry ... I must be a devout 
student and admirer of your works." 

Browning is made very happy by her words, and he feels 
that his poor praise "was nearly as felicitously brought 
out as a certain tribute to Tasso, which amused me in Rome 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 75 

some weeks ago," he says, "In a neat penciling on the 
wall by his tomb at Sant' Onofrio — 'Alia car a memoria 

— di — Torquato Tasso — il Dottore Bernardini — offriva 

— il sequente Carme — tu' — and no more; the good man, 
it would seem, breaking down with the over-load of love 
here! But my ' tu' was breathed out most sincerely, 
and now you have taken it in gracious part, the rest will 
come after." And then he must repeat (to himself) that 
her poetry must be infinitely more to him than his could 
be to her, "for you do what I have only hoped to do." 
And he hopes she will nevermore talk of "the honor " of 
his acquaintance, but he will joyfully wait for the deHght of 
her friendship. And to his fear that she may hate letter- 
writing she replies suggesting that nobody likes writing to 
everybody, but it would be strange and contradictory if 
she were not always delighted to hear from and to write 
to him; and she can read any manuscript except the writ- 
ing on the pyramids, and if he will only treat her en bon 
camarade "without reference to the conventionalities of 
' ladies and gentlemen'"; taking no thought for his sen- 
tences (or hers), " nor for your badd speling nor for mine," 
she is ready to sign and seal the contract of correspondence. 
And while she throws off the ceremony, she holds faster to 
the kindness. She is overjoyed with this cordial sympathy. 
"Is it true," she asks, " that I know so little of you? And 
is it true that the productions of an artist do not partake 
of his real nature? It is not true to my mind, — and there- 
fore it is not true that I know little of you, except in so far 
as it is true that your greatest works are to come. ... I 
think — if I may dare name myself with you in the poetic 
relation — that we both have high views of the Art we 
follow and steadfast purpose in the pursuit of it. . . . 
And that neither of us would be likely to be thrown from 
the course by the casting of any Atalanta ball of speedy 
popularity. 



76 THE BROWNINGS 

"And after all that has been said and mused upon the 
anxiety experienced by the true artist, — is not the good 
immeasurably greater than the evil? For my part I some- 
times wonder how, without such an object and purpose of 
life, people contrive to live at all." 

And her idea of happiness ''Ues deep in poetry and its 
associations." And he replies that what he has printed 
"gives no knowledge of me," and that he has never begun 
what he hopes he was born to begin and end — "R. B. a 
poem." 

"Do you know Tennyson?" she asks, "that is, with a 
face to face knowledge? I have great admiration for him," 
she continues. "In execution he is exquisite, — and in 
music a most subtle weigher out to the ear of fine airs." 
And she asks if he knows what it is to covet his neighbor's 
poetry, — not his fame, but his poetry. It delights her to 
hear of his garden full of roses and his soul full of comforts. 
She finds the conception of his Pippa "most exquisite, 
and altogether original." 

In one of Miss Barrett's letters a few weeks later there 
seems discernible a forecast of "Aurora Leigh," when she 
writes that her chief intention is the writing "of a sort 
of novel-poem," and one "as completely modern as 'Ger- 
aldine's Courtship,' running into the midst of our con- 
ventions, and rushing into drawing-rooms and the like 
'where angels fear to tread'; and so meeting face to face 
and without mask the Humanity of the age, and speaking 
the truth, as I conceive of it, out plainly." She is waiting 
for a story; she will not take one, because she likes to 
make her own. Here is without doubt the first conception 
of "Aurora Leigh." 

Touching on Life in another letter, she records her feel- 
ing that " the brightest place in the house is the leaning out 
of the window." 

Browning replies: "And pray you not to lean out of the 
window when my own foot is only on the stair." . . . 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 77 

*'But I did not mean to strike a tragic chord," she re- 
plies; "indeed I did not. As to ' escaping with my life,' 
it was just a phrase ... for the rest I am essentially- 
better . . . and feel as if it were intended for me to live 
and not to die." And referring to a passage relating to 
Prometheus she asks: "And tell me, if iEschylus is not 
the divinest of all the divine Greek souls? " She 
continues : 

"But to go back to the view of Life with the blind Hopes; 
you are not to think — whatever I may have written or implied 
— that I lean either to the philosophy or affectation which 
beholds the world through darkness instead of light . . . and 
after a course of bitter mental discipline and long bodily seclu- 
sion I come out with two lessons learned — the wisdom of cheer- 
fulness and the duty of social intercourse. Anguish has in- 
structed me in joy, and solitude in society. . . . What we call 
Mfe is a condition of the soul, and the soul must improve in 
happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. . . . And I 
do Like to hear testimonies like yours, to happiness, and I feel 
it to be a testimony of a higher sort than the obvious one. . . . 
Remember, that as you owe your unscathed joy to God, you 
should pay it back to His world. I thank you for some of it 
aheady.' 

And she feels how kind he is, — how gently and kindly 
he speaks to her. In his next letter he alludes with much 
feeling to her idea of the poem-novel: 

"The Poem you propose to make; the fresh, fearless, living 
work you describe, is the only Poem to be undertaken now by 
you or any one who is a poet at all ; the only reality, only effect- 
ive piece of service to be rendered God or man ; it is what I have 
been all my life intending to do, and now shall be much nearer 
doing since you will be along with me. And you can do it, I 
know and am sure, — so sure that I could find it in my heart 
to be jealous of your stopping on the way even to translate the 
Prometheus. ..." 



78 THE BROWNINGS 

The lovers, for such they already are, however uncon- 
sciously to both, fall into a long discussion of Prometheus, 
and the Greek drama in general, and in another letter, with 
allusion to his begging her to take her own good time 
in writing, she half playfully proffers that it is her own 
bad time to which she must submit. "This implacable 
weather!" she writes; " this east wind that seems to blow 
through the sun and the moon! . . . There will be a May 
and June if we live to see such things," and then she speaks 
of seeing him besides, and while she recognizes it is morbid 
to shrink and grow pale in the spirit, yet not all her fine 
philosophy about social duties quite carries her through. 
But "if he thinks she shall not like to see him, he is wrong, 
for all his learning." What pathos of revelation of this 
brave, celestial spirit, tenanting the most fragile of bodies, 
is read in the ensuing passage: 

"What you say of society draws me on to many comparative 
thoughts of your life and mine. You seem to have drunken of 
the cup of Ufe full with the sun shining on it. I have lived only 
inwardly, or with sorrow for a strong emotion. Before this 
seclusion of my illness I was secluded still, and there are few of 
the youngest women in the world who have not seen more, 
known more, of society, than I, who am hardly to be called 
young now. I grew up in the country, had no social opportu- 
nities, had my heart in books and poetry, and my experience 
in reveries. . . . Books and dreams were what I lived in — and 
domestic life seemed to buzz gently around, like the bees about 
the grass. . . . Why, if I live on and escape this seclusion, do 
you not perceive that I labor under signal disadvantages, that 
I am, in a manner, a bHnd poet? ... I have had much of the 
inner life . . . but how willingly would I exchange some of this 
ponderous, helpless knowledge of books for some experience of 
life. . . . But grumbling is a vile thing, and we should all 
thank God for our measures of life, and think them enough. . . . 
Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while 
I write — it is life for me. Why, what is it to live? Not to eat 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 79 

and drink and breathe, — but to feel the life in you down all 
the fibers of being, passionately and joyfully. . . . 

"Ah, you tempt me with a grand vision of Prometheus! . . . 
I am inclined to think that we want new forms. . . . The old 
gods are dethroned. Why should we go back to the antique 
moulds? If it is a necessity of Art to do this, then those critics 
are right who hold that Art is exhausted. ... I do not believe 
this; and I believe the so-called necessity of Art to be the mere 
feebleness of the artist. Let us all aspire rather to Life. . . . 
For there is poetry everywhere. ..." 

Miss Barrett writes to him, continuing the discussion of 
poetry as an Art, that she does not want "material as mate- 
rial, but that every life requires a full experience," and 
she has a profound conviction that a poet is at a lamentable 
disadvantage if he has been shut from most of the outer 
aspects of life. And he, replying, deprecates a little the 
outward life for a poet, with amusing references to a novel 
of DTsraeli's, where, "lo, dinner is done, and Vivian Grey 
is here, and Violet Fane there, and a detachment of the 
party is drafted off to catch butterflies." But still he 
partly agrees, and feels that her Danish novel ("The Im- 
provisatore") must be full of truth and beauty, and "that 
a Dane should write so, confirms me in a belief that Italy is 
stuff for the use of the North and no more — pure Poetry 
there is none, as near as possible none, in Dante, even; . . . 
and Alfieri, . . . with a life of travel, writes you some 
fifteen tragedies as colorless as salad grown under a garden 
glass . . ." But she — if she asks questions about novels 
it is because she wants to see him by the refracted lights, as 
wtII as by the direct ones; and Dante's poetry — "only 
material for northern rhjmiers ? " She must think of 
that before she agrees with him. 

As for Browning, he bids her remember that he writes 
letters to no one but her; but there is never enough of tell- 
ing her . . . And she, noting his sitting up in the morning 



8o THE BROWNINGS 

till six, and sleeping only till nine, wants to know "how 
* Lurias' can be made out of such ungodly imprudences? 
And what is the reasonableness of it," she questions, "when 
we all know that thinking, dreaming, creative people, Kke 
yourself, have two lives to bear instead of one, and there- 
fore ought to sleep more than others"; and he is antici- 
pating the day when he shall see her with his own eyes, 
and now a day is named on which he will call, and he begs 
her not to mind his coming in the least, for if she does not 
feel able to see him he will come again, and again, as his 
time is of no importance. 

It was on the afternoon of May 20 (1845) that Robert 
Browning and Elizabeth Barrett first met, and of them it 
could almost have been said, in words ascribed to Michael 
Angelo for Vittoria Colonna, — 

"We are the only two, that, face to face, 
Do know each other, as God doth know us both," 

It is said that the first letter of Browning's to her after 
this meeting is the only one destroyed of all this wonderful 
correspondence; and this was such a letter as could only 
be interpreted into a desire for marriage, which she, all 
tender thoughtfulness always for others, characteristically 
felt would be fatal to his happiness because of her in- 
vahd state. He begged her to return the letter, and he 
then destroyed it; and again pleaded that their friendship 
and intellectual comradeship should continue. "Your 
friendship and sympathy will be dear and precious to me all 
my Hfe, ii you indeed leave them with me so long, or so 
little," she writes; and she utterly forbids any further ex- 
pression or she must do this "to be in my own eyes and 
before God a little more worthy, or a little less unworthy, 
of a generosity ..." And he discreetly veils his ardors 
for the time, and the wonderful letters run on. 

He is writing "The Flight of the Duchess," and sending 




Monument to Michael Angelo, by Vasari 

church of santa croce. 

" They are safe in heaven .... 
The Michaels ani Rafae's . . . . " 

Old Pictures in Florence. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 8i 

it to her by installments; she finds it "past speaking of," 
and she also refers to "exquisite pages " of Landor's in the 
"Pentameron." And poems which he has left with her, — 
she must have her own gladness from them in her own way. 
And did he go to Chelsea, and hear the divine philosophy? 
Apparently he did, for he writes: 

"Yes, I went to Chelsea and found dear Carlyle alone — 
his wife is in the country where he will join her as soon as 
the book's last proof sheets are corrected, . . . He was all 
kindness, and talked like his own self while he made me tea 
— and would walk as far as Vauxhall Bridge with me on my 
way home." 

She writes: 

"I had a letter yesterday from Charles Hemans, the son of 
Felicia, . . . who says his mother's memory is surrounded to 
him 'with almost a divine lustre,' . . . and is not that better 
than your tradition about Shelley's son? and is it not pleas- 
ant to know that the noble, pure-hearted woman, the Vittoria 
Colonna of our country, should be so loved and compre- 
hended by one, at least, of her own house?" 

Under date of August 25, Miss Barrett has been moved to 
write out the pathetic story of her brother Edward's death. 
He had accompanied her to Torquay, — he, "the kind- 
est, the noblest, the dearest, and when the time came for 
him to return I, weakened by illness, could not master my 
spirits or drive back my tears," and he then decided not to 
leave her. "And ten days from that day," she continued, 
"the boat left the shore which never returned — and he 
had left me! For three days we waited, — oh, that awful 
agony of three days! , . . Do not notice what I have 
written to you, my dearest friend. I have never said so 
much to a living being — I never could speak or write of 
it. . . ." 

But he writes her that "better than being happy in her 



82 THE BROWNINGS 

happiness, is it to participate in her sorrow." And the very- 
last day of that August he writes that he has had such 
power over himself as to keep silent . . . but "Let me say 
now — this only once, — that I loved you from my soul, 
and gave you my life, as much of it as you would take, and 
all that ... is independent of any return on your part." 
She assures him that he has followed the most generous 
of impulses toward her, " yet I cannot help adding that, 
of us two, yours has not been quite the hardest part." 
She confesses how deeply she is affected by his words, "but 
what could I speak," she questions, "that would not be un- 
just to you? . . . Your life! if you gave it to me and I put 
my whole heart into it, what should I put in but anxiety, 
and more sadness than you were born to? What could I 
give you which it would not be ungenerous to give?" 

There was a partial plan that Miss Barrett should pass 
that next winter in Pisa, but owing to the strange and 
incalculable disposition of her father, who, while he loved 
her, was singularly autocratic in his treatment, the plan 
was abandoned. All this sorrow may have contributed 
to her confession to Browning that no man had ever been 
to her feelings what he was; and that if she were different 
in some respects she would accept the great trust of his 
happiness. . . . "But we may be friends always," she con- 
tinues, "and cannot be so separated that the knowledge 
of your happiness will not increase mine. . . . Worldly 
thoughts these are not at all, there need be no soiling of 
the heart with any such; . . . you cannot despise the gold 
and gauds of the world more than I do, . . . and even if I 
wished to be very poor, in the world's sense of poverty, I 
could not, with three or four hundred a year, of which no 
living will can dispossess me. And is not the chief good of 
money, the being free from the need of thinking of it? " 
But he, perfect in his beautiful trust and tenderness, was 
"joyfully confident" that the way would open, and he 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 83 

thanks God that, to the utmost of his power, he has not 
been unworthy of having been introduced to her. He is 
"no longer in the first freshness of his Hfe " and had for 
years felt it impossible that he should ever love any woman. 
But he will wait. That she "cannot dance like Cerito " 
does not materially disarrange his plan! And by the last 
of those September days she confesses that she is his "for 
everything but to do him harm," he has touched her so 
profoundly, and now "none, except God and your own 
will, shall interpose between you and me." And he an- 
swered her in such words as these: 

"When I come back from seeing you and think over it all, 
there is never a least word of yours I could not occupy myself 
with. . . ." 

In a subsequent letter Elizabeth Barrett questions: 
"Could it be that heart and life were devastated to make 
room for you? if so it was well done." And she sends 
thanks to Browning's sister, Sarianna, for a copy of Lan- 
dor's verses. 

And with all these gracious and tenderly exquisite per- 
sonal matters, the letters are yet brilliant in literary allu- 
sion and criticism. 

During these three years from 1844 to 1847 were written 
the greater number of Miss Barrett's finest lyrics. Those 
two remarkable poems, "A Rhapsody of Life's Progress" 
and "Confessions"; "Loved Once"; "The Sleep" (the poem 
which was read at her burial in the lovely, cypress-crowned 
cemetery in Florence, and whose stanzas, set to music, were 
chanted by the choir in Westminster Abbey when the body 
of her husband was laid in the "Poets' Corner"), "The 
Dead Pan," and that most exquisite lyric of all, "Catarina 
to Camoens," were all written during this period. 

The title of the latter was but a transparent veil for 
her own feelings toward Robert Browning, and had she 



84 THE BROWNINGS 

died in his absence, as Catarina did in that of Camoens, 
the words would have expressed her own feeling. What 
profound pathos is in the line, 

"Death is near me, — and not you, " 

and how her own infinite sweetness of spirit is mirrored in 
the stanza, 

"I will look out to his future; 
I will bless it till it shine, 
Should he ever be a suitor 

Unto sweeter eyes than mine." 

And read her own self-revelation again in "A Denial," 

"We have met late — it is too late to meet, 
O friend, not more than friend! " 

But the denial breaks down, and the last lines tell the 
story: 

"Here 's no more courage in my soul to say 
' Look in my face and see.'" 

And in that last line of "Insufficiency," 

"I love thee so. Dear, that I only can leave thee." 

In "Question and Answer," in "Proof and Disproof," 
"A Valediction," "Loved Once," and "Inclusions," he 
who reads between the Unes and has the magic of divina- 
tion may read the story of her inner life. 

In the poem "Confessions" is touched a note of mysti- 
cal, spiritual romance, spiritual tragedy, wholly of the inner 
life, that entirely differentiates from any other poetic ex- 
pression of Mrs. Browning, In one stanza occur these 
lines : 

"The least touch of their hands in the morning, I keep it by day and 
by night; 
Their least step on the stair, at the door, still throbs through me, if 
ever so light. " 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 85 

Even with all allowance for the imagination of the 
poet, these lines reveal such feeling, such tremulous sus- 
ceptibility, that with less intellectual balance than was 
hers, combined with such lack of physical vigor, would 
almost inevitably have resulted in failure of poise. The 
current of spiritual energy was so strong with Elizabeth 
Barrett 'as to largely take the place of greater physical 
strength. That she never relapsed into the conditions of 
morbid invalidism is a marvel, and it is also an impres- 
sive testimony to the power of spiritual energy to control 
and determine physical conditions. 

All through that summer the letters run on, daily, semi- 
daily. Of his work Browning writes that he shall be 
"prouder to begin one day, — may it be soon! — with your 
hand in mine from the beginning." Miss Barrett, referring 
to the Earl of Compton, who is reported from Rome as 
having achieved some prominence as a painter, proceeds 
to say: 

"People in general would rather be Marquises than Roman 
artists, consulting their own wishes and inclination. I, for my 
part, ever since I could speak my mind and knew it, always 
openly and inwardly preferred the glory of those who live by 
their heads, to the opposite glory of those who carry other 
people's arms. So much for glory. Happiness goes the same 
way to my fancy. There is something fascinating to me in that 
Bohemian way of living. . . . All the conventions of society 
cut so close and thin, that the soul can see through. . . . Be- 
yond, above. It is real life as you say . . . whether at Rome 
or elsewhere. I am very glad that you like simplicity in habits 
of life — it has both reasonableness and sanctity. ... I am 
glad that you — who have had temptation enough, more than 
enough, I am sure, in every form — have lived in the midst of 
this London of ours, close to the great social vortex, yet have 
kept so safe, and free, and calm, and pure from the besetting 
sins of our society." 



86 THE BROWNINGS 

Browning, in one letter, alluding to the prevailing stu- 
pidity of the idea that genius and domestic happiness are 
incompatible, says: "We will live the real answer, will we 
not? ... A man of genius mistreats his wife; well, take 
away the genius, — does he so instantly improve?" 

Of the attitude of his family toward their marriage he 
writes: 

"My family all love you, dearest, — you cannot conceive 
my father's and mother's childlike faith in goodness — and my 
sister is very high-spirited, and quick of apprehension — so as 
to seize the true point of the case at once. . . . Last night I 
asked my father, who was absorbed over some old book, if he 
should not be glad to see his new daughter? — to which he, start- 
ing, replied, 'Indeed I shall'; with such a fervor as to make my 
mother laugh, — not abated by his adding: 'And how I should 
be glad of her seeing Sarianna!'" 

And she writes : 

" Shall we go to Greece, then, Robert? Let us, if you like it. 
When we have used a Uttle the charm of your Italy, ... I 
should like to see Athens with my living eyes. . . . Athens was 
in all the dreams I dreamed, before I knew you. Why should 
we not see Athens, and Egypt, too, and float down the mystical 
Nile, and stand in the shadow of the Pyramids? All of it is 
more possible now, than walking up the street seemed to me 
last year." 

And he writes that he always felt her "Wine of Cyprus" 
poem to fill his heart "with unutterable desires." 

To book-lovers the question as to how many books may 
be taken on a journey, or what volumes, indeed, may be 
left behind, is a vital one. The reader will smile sympa- 
thetically at Miss Barrett's consultation with Browning 
as to whether, if they do "achieve the peculiar madness of 
going to Italy," they could take any books? And whether 
it would be well to so arrange that they should not take 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 87 

duplicates? He advises the narrowest compass for luggage. 
'*We can return for what we want, or procure it abroad," 
he says, made wise by his two Italian journeys; and he 
adds: 

"I think the fewer books we take the better; they take up 
room, — and the wise way always seemed to me to read at home, 
and open one's eyes and see abroad. A critic somewhere men- 
tioned that as my characteristic — there were two other poets 
he named placed in novel circumstances. . . . in a great wood, 
for instance, Mr. Trench would begin opening books to see how 
woods were treated . . . the other man would set to writing 
poetry forthwith, — and R. B. would sit still and learn how to 
write after! A pretty compUment, I thought that. But, seri- 
ously, there must be a great library at Pisa (with that Univer- 
sity) and abroad they are delighted to facilitate such matters. 
... I have read in a chamber of the Doges' palace at Venice 
painted all over by Tintoretto, walls and ceiling, and at Rome 
there is a hbrary with a learned priest always kept ready 'to 
solve any doubts that may arise.' " 

Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett were married 
on September 12, 1846, in the church of St. Pancras, Maryle- 
bone, the only witnesses being his cousin, James Silver- 
thome, and her maid, Wilson. To have taken her sisters 
into her confidence would have been. to expose them to 
the fairly insane wrath of her father. *'I hate and loathe 
everything which is clandestine — we both do, Robert and 
I," said Mrs. Browning later; but this was the only pos- 
sible way. Had Mr. Browning spoken to her father in the 
usual manner, "he would have been forbidden the house 
without a moment's scruple," she explained to a friend; 
"and I should have been incapacitated from any after 
exertion by the horrible scenes to which, as a thing of course, 
I should have been exposed. ... I cannot bear some words. 
In my actual state of physical weakness, it would have been 
the sacrifice of my whole life — of my convictions, of my 



88 THE BROWNINGS 

arfections, and, above all, of what the person dearest to me 
persisted in calling his life, and the good of it — if I had 
observed that ' form.' Therefore I determined not to ob- 
serve it, and I consider that in not doing so, I sinned against 
no duty. That I was constrained to act clandestinely, and 
did not choose to do so, God is my witness. Also, up to the 
very last, we stood in the Hght of day for the whole world, if 
it please, to judge us. I never saw him out of the Wimpole 
Street house. He came twice a week to see me, openly in 
the sight of all." 

In no act of her Hfe did Mrs. Browning more impressively 
reveal her good sense than in this of her marriage. " I had 
long believed such an act," she said, "the most strictly per- 
sonal of one's life, — to be within the rights of every person 
of mature age, man or woman, and I had resolved to exer- 
cise that right in my own case by a resolution which had 
slowly ripened. All the other doors of Hfe were shut to me, 
and shut me as in a prison, and only before this door stood 
one whom I loved best and who loved me best, and who in- 
vited me out through it for the good's sake he thought I 
could do him." . . . To a friend she explained her long 
refusal to consent to the marriage, fearing that her delicate 
health would make it "ungenerous " in her to yield to his 
entreaty; but he replied that 

" he would not tease me, he would wait twenty years if I pleased, 
and then, if life lasted so long for both of us, then, when it was 
ending, perhaps, I might understand him and feel that I might 
have trusted him. . . . He preferred he said, of free and delib- 
erate choice, to be allowed to sit only an hour a day by my side, 
to the fulfillment of the brightest dream which should exclude 
me, in any possible world." 

She continues: 

"I tell you so much that you may see the manner of man I 
had to do with, and the sort of attachment which for nearly two 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 89 

years has been drawing and winning me, I know better than 
any in the world, indeed, what Mr. Kenyon once unconsciously 
said before me, that 'Robert Browning is great in every thing.' 
. . . Now may I not tell you that his genius, and all but miracu- 
lous attainments, are the least things in him, the moral nature 
being of the very noblest, as all who ever knew him admit." 

After the marriage ceremony Mrs. Browning drove with 
her maid to the home of Mr. Boyd, resting there, as if 
making a morning call on a familiar friend, until joined by 
her sisters, who took her for a Httle drive on Hampstead 
Heath. For five days she remained in her father's house, 
and during this time Browning could not bring himself to 
call and ask for his wife as "Miss Barrett," so they ar- 
ranged all the details of their journey by letter. On Septem- 
ber 19 they left for Paris, and the last one of these immortal 
letters, written the evening before their departure, from 
Mrs. Browning to her husband, contains these words: 

** By to-morrow at this time I shall have you, only, to love 
me, my beloved! You, only! As if one said, God, only! And 
we shall have Him beside, I pray of Him!" 

With her maid, Mrs. Browning walked out of her father's 
house the next day, meeting her husband at a bookseller's 
around the corner of the street, and they drove to the sta- 
tion, leaving for Southampton to catch the night boat to 
Havre. 

Never could the world have understood the ineffable 
love and beauty and nobleness of the characters of both 
Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, had these letters 
been withheld from the public. Quite aside from the deeper 
interest of their personal revelation, — the revelation of such 
nobleness and such ' perfect mutual comprehension and 
tenderness of sjonpathy as are here revealed, — the pages 
are full of interesting literary allusion and comment, of wit, 
repartee, and of charm that defies analysis. It was a wise 



90 THE BROWNINGS 

and generous gift when the son of the poets, Robert Bar- 
rett Browning, gave these wonderful letters to the reading 
public. The supreme test of literature is that which con- 
tributes to the spiritual wealth of the world. Measured by 
this standard, these are of the highest Uterary order. 
No one can fail to realize how all that is noblest in man- 
hood, all that is holiest in womanhood, is revealed in this 
correspondence. 

Edmund Clarence Stedman, after reading these letters, 
said: *'It would have been almost a crime to have per- 
mitted this wonderful, exceptional interchange of soul and 
mind, between these two strong, * excepted ' beings, to 
leave no trace forever." 

Robert Barrett Browning, in referring to his pubHcation 
of this correspondence in a conversation with the writer of 
this volume, remarked that he really had no choice in the 
matter, as the Apochryphal legends and myths and impro- 
visations that had even then begun to weave themselves 
about the remarkable and unusual story of the acquaint- 
ance, courtship, and marriage of his parents, could only be 
dissipated by the simple truth, as revealed in their own 
letters. 

Their love took its place in the spiritual order; it was a 
bond that made itself the mystic force in their mutual 
development and achievement; and of which the woman, 
whose reverence for the Divine Life was the strongest ele- 
ment in her nature, could yet say, — 

"And I, who looked for only God, found thee!" 

Life, as well as Literature, would have been the poorer 
had not Mr. Barrett Browning so wisely and generously 
enriched both by the publication of this correspondence. 

Not the least among the beautiful expressions that have 
been made by those spirits so touched to fine issues as to 
enter into the spiritual loveliness of these letters of Robert 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 91 

Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, is a sonnet by a New 
England poet, Rev. William Brunton, — a poet who 
"died too soon," but whose love for the poetry of the 
Brownings was as ardent as it was finely appreciative: 

"Oh! dear departed saints of highest song, 

Behind the screen of time your love lay hid, 
Its fair unfoldment was in life forbid — 
As doing such divine affection wrong, 
But now we read with interest deep and strong. 
And lift from off the magic jar the lid. 
And lo! your spirit stands the clouds amid 
And speaks to us in some superior tongue! 

"Devotion such as yours is heavenly- wise, 

And yet the possible of earth ye show; 

Ye dwellers in the blue of summer skies, 

Through you a finer love of love we know; 
It is as if the angels moved with men, 
And key of Paradise were found again!" 



CHAPTER VI 
1846- 1850 

"And on her lover's arm she leant 

And round her waist she felt it fold, 
And far across the hills they went 

To that new world which is the old. 
Across the hills, and far away, 

Beyond their utmost purple rim, 
Beyond the night, beyond the day. 

Through all the world she followed him." 

Marriage and Italy — "In that New World " — The Haunts 
OF Petrarca — The Magic Land — In Pisa — Vallombrosa 
— " Un Bel Giro " — Guercino's Angel — Casa Guidi — 
Birth of Robert Barrett Browning — Bagni di Lucca 
— " Sonnets from the Portuguese " — The Enchant- 
ment of Italy. 

Paris, "and such a strange week it was," wrote Mrs. 
Browning to Miss Mitford; "whether in the body, or out 
of the body, I can scarcely teU. Our Balzac should be 
flattered beyond measure by my even thinking of him at 
all." The journey from London to Paris was not then 
quite the swift and easy affair it now is, the railroad be- 
tween Paris and Havre not being then completed beyond 
Rouen; still, such an elixir of life is happiness that Mrs. 
Browning arrived in the French Capital feeling much 
better than when she left London. Mrs. Jameson had only 
recently taken leave of Miss Barrett on her sofa, and 
sympathetically offered to take her to Italy herself for the 
winter with her niece; Miss Barrett had repHed: "Not 
only am I grateful to you, but happy to be grateful to you," 
but she had given no hint of the impending marriage. 



THE BROWNINGS 93 

Mrs. Jameson's surprise, on receiving a note from Mrs. 
Browning, saying she was in Paris, was so great that her 
niece, Geraldine Bate (afterward Mrs. MacPherson of 
Rome), asserted that her aunt's amazement was "ahnost 
comical." Mrs. Jameson lost no time in persuading the 
Brownings to join her and her niece at their quiet pension 
in the Rue Ville I'Eveque, where they remained for a week, 
— this "strange week " to Mrs. Browning. 

In Paris they visited the galleries of the Louvre, but did 
little sight-seeing beyond, ''being satisfied with the idea of 
Paris," she said. 

To a friend Mrs. Jameson wrote: 

"I have also here a poet and a poetess — two celebrities who 
have run away and married under circumstances peculiarly 
interesting, and such as render imprudence the height of pru- 
dence. Both excellent; but God help them! for I know not how 
the two poet heads and poet hearts will get on through this 
prosaic world." 

As for ways and means, however, the Brownings were 
sufficiently provided. He had a modest independence, and 
she also had in her own right a little fortune of some forty 
thousand pounds, yielding three or four hundred pounds a 
year; but in the July preceding their marriage Browning, 
with his sensitive honor, insisted upon her making a will 
bequeathing this capital to her own family. In a letter 
to him dated July 27 of that summer the story of his insist- 
ence on this is revealed in her own words: "I will write the 
paper as you bid me. . . . You are noble in all things . . . 
but I will not discuss it so as to tease you. ... I send you 
the paper therefore, to that end, and only to that end. ..." 
The ''document," by Browning's insistence, gave her 
property to her two sisters, in equal division, or, in case of 
their death, to the surviving brothers. Nothing less than 
this would satisfy Robert Browning. 



94 THE BROWNINGS 

Meantime, there was the natural London comment. 
Wordsworth observed: "So Robert Browning and Eliza- 
beth Barrett have gone off together ! It is to be hoped they 
can understand each other, for no one else can." 

Mr. Kenyon wrote "the kindest letter " to them both, 
and pronounced them "justified to the uttermost," and to 
Mrs. Browning he said: "I considered that you had im- 
periled your Hfe upon this undertaking and I still thought 
you had done wisely! " But by that magic alchemy of love 
and happiness Mrs. Browning only gained constantly in 
strength, and Mrs. Jameson pronounced them "wise 
people, whether wild poets or not." 

Among the interesting comments on the marriage was 
Joseph Arnould's letter to Alfred Domett, under date of 
November of that year. He wrote: 

"... I think the last piece of news I told you of was Brown- 
ing's marriage to Miss Barrett. She is, you know, our present 
greatest living English poetess: . . . she has been in the most 
absolute and enforced seclusion from society; cultivating her 
mind to a wonderful amount of accomplishment, instructing 
herself in all languages, reading Chrysostom in the original 
Greek, and publishing the best metrical translation that has 
yet appeared of the ' Prometheus Bound ' — having also found 
time to write three volumes of poetry, the last of which raised 
her name to a place second only to that of Browning and Tenny- 
son, amongst all those who are not repelled by eccentricities 
of external form from penetrating into the soul and quintessen- 
tial spirit of poetry that quickens the mould into which the 
poet has cast it. Well, this lady, so gifted, so secluded, so tyran- 
nized over, fell in love with Browning in the spirit before ever 
she saw him in the flesh — in plain English, loved the writer, 
before she knew the man. Imagine, you who know him, the 
effect which his graceful bearing, high demeanor, and noble 
speech must have had on such a mind when first she saw the 
man of her visions in the twilight of her darkened room. She 
was at once in love as a poet-soul only can be; and Browning, as 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 95 

by contagion or electricity, was no less from the first interview 
wholly in love with her. . . . He is a glorious fellow! Oh, I 
forgot to say that the soi-disante invaUd, once emancipated 
from the paternal despotism, has had a wondrous revival, or 
rather, a complete metamorphosis; walks, rides, eats, and drinks 
like a young and healthy woman, — in fact, is a healthy 
woman of, I believe, some five and thirty. But one word covers 
all; they are in Love, who lends his own youth to everything." 

The journey from Paris to Italy, if less comfortable and 
expeditious than now, was certainly more romantic, and 
the Brownings, in company with Mrs. Jameson and her 
niece, fared forth to Orleans, and thence to Avignon, 
where they rested for two days, making a poetic pilgrimage 
toVaucluse, where Petrarca had sought solitude. "There 
at the very source of the * chiare,fresche e dolci acque,''^^ re- 
cords Mrs. MacPherson in her biography of Mrs. Jameson, 
"Mr. Browning took his wife up in his arms, and carrying 
her across through the shallow, curling waters, seated her 
on a rock that rose throne-Uke in the middle of the stream. 
Thus Love and Poetry took a new possession of the spot 
immortalized by Petrarca's fancy." 

From Marseilles they sailed to Livomo (Leghorn), the 
port only a few miles from Pisa. The voyage was a delight 
to Mrs. Browning. She was enchanted with the beautiful 
panorama of the Riviera as they sailed down the coast, 
where the terraces of mountains rise, with old castles and 
ruins often crowning their summits, and the white gleam 
of the hill-towns against a background of blue sky. 
All the Spezzia region was haunted by memories of 
Shelley; Lerici, where last he had lived, was plainly in 
view, and they gazed sadly at Viareggio, encircled by pine 
woods and mountains, where the body of the poet had been 
found. In Pisa they took rooms in the Collegio Fernandino, 
in the Piazza del Duomo, in that corner of Pisa wherein are 
grouped the Cathedral, the Baptistery, the Leaning Tower, 



96 THE BROWNINGS 

and the Campo Santo, all in this consummate beauty of 
silence and seclusion, — a splendor of abandoned glory. 
All the stir of life (if, indeed, one may dream of life in Pisa) 
is far away on the other side of the city; to this corner is 
left the wraith-like haunted atmosphere, where only shad- 
ows flit over the grass, and the sunset reflections Hnger on 
the Tower. A statue of Cosimo di Medici was near; the 
Lanfranchi palace, where Byron had lived, was not far 
away, on the banks of the Arno. They quite preferred the 
Duomo and the Campo Santo to social festivities, and Pro- 
fessor Ferrucci offered them all the hospitaUties of the Uni- 
versity library. They had an apartment of four rooms, 
"matted and carpeted," coffee and rolls in the morning, 
dinner at the Trattoria, "thrushes and chianti with a mar- 
velous cheapness, no trouble, no cook, no kitchen; the 
prophet Elijah, or the lilies of the field, took as little thought 
for their dining," writes Mrs. Browning, "and it exactly 
suits us. At nine we have our supper of roast chestnuts 
and grapes. . . . My head goes round sometimes. I was 
never happy before in my life. . . . And when I am so 
good as to let myself be carried up-stairs, and so angelical 
as to sit still on the sofa, and so considerate as not to put 
my foot into a puddle, why; my duty is considered done to 
a perfection worthy all adoration. . . . Mrs. Jameson and 
Geraldine are staying in the hotel, and we manage to see 
them every day; so good and true and affectionate she is, 
and so much we shall miss her when she goes. . . . Our 
present residence we have taken for six months, but we 
have dreams, and we discuss them Uke soothsayers over 
the evening grapes and chestnuts." 

That in London Mrs. Jameson, on her first call on Miss 
Barrett, should have so winningly insisted on being ad- 
mitted to her room as to be successful, almost to Miss 
Barrett's own surprise, seems, when seen in connection 
with the way in which Fate was to throw them together 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 97 

afterward, in Italy, to have been one of those "fore- 
ordained " happenings of Ufe. 

They heard a musical mass for the dead in the Campo 
Santo; they walked under orange trees with golden fruit 
hanging above their heads ; they took drives to the foot of 
the mountains, and watched the reflections in the little lake 
of Ascuno. Mrs. Browning, from her windows, could see the 
cathedral summit glitter whitely, between the blue sky and 
its own yellow marble walls. Beautiful and tender letters 
came to them both from Mr. Kenyon, and they heard that 
Carlyle had said that he hoped more from Robert Brown- 
ing, for the people of England, than from any other living 
English writer. All of these things entered into the very 
fiber of their Pisan days. Pisa seemed to her a beautiful 
town, — it could not be less, she felt, with Arno and its 
palaces, and it was to her full of repose, but not desolate. 
Meantime, Mr. Browning was preparing for a new edition 
of his collected poems. 

Curiously, all the biographers of Robert Browning have 
recorded that it was during this sojourn in Pisa that the 
"Sonnets from the Portuguese" were first made known 
to him. Dr. Dowden quotes the story as given by Mr. 
Edmund Gosse, and Mr. Gosse cites Browning himself 
as his authority, Yet there was some mistake, as the Son- 
nets were not seen by Mr. Browning till some time later. 

Robert Barrett Browning, in Florence, in the spring of 
19 10, in reply to a question asked by the writer of this book 
in regard to the accuracy of this impression, replied that 
both Mr. Gosse and Dr. Dowden were mistaken; as his 
mother did not show these "Sonnets " to his father until the 
summer of 1849, when they were at Bagni di Lucca. Mr. 
Gosse must in some way have mistaken Mr. Browning's 
words, and the error has perpetuated itself through every 
successive biography of the poet. 

The first home of the Brownings in Florence was in an 



98 THE BROWNINGS 

apartment near Santa Maria Novella, where the Italian 
sunshine burned fiercely, and where Mrs. Browning ex- 
claimed that she began to comprehend the possibility of 
St. Lawrence's ecstasies on the gridiron. "Yet there have 
been cool intermissions," she wrote, ''and as we have spa- 
cious and airy rooms, and as we can step out of the window 
on a balcony terrace which is quite private, and swims 
over with moonUght in the evenings, and as we Uve upon 
watermelons, and iced water, and figs, and all manner of 
fruit, we bear the heat with angelic patience." 

There was a five days' interlude at Vallombrosa, which 
the poets vainly entreated the monks to prolong to two 
months, but the brethren would have none of the presence 
of two women, — Mrs. Browning and her maid, Wilson. 
So they perforce left these fascinating hills, "a sea of hills 
looking alive among the clouds." Still further up above 
the monastery was the old Hermitage now transformed into 
a hotel. It was here that MigUorotti passed many years, 
asserting that he could only think of it as Paradise, and 
thus it came to be known as Paradisino, the name it still 
bears. Far below in a dim distance Hes Florence, with her 
domes and towers on which the sunshine ghtters, or the 
white moonlight of the Val d'Arno shines; and on every 
hand are the deep valleys and crevasses, the Val di Sieve, 
the Val di Casentino, and the height of San Miniato in Alpe. 
Castles and convents, or their ruins, abound; and here 
Dante passed, and there St. Benedict, and again is the path 
still holy with the footsteps of St. Francis. The murmur- 
ing springs that feed the Arno are heard in the hills; and 
the vast soUtudes of the wood, with their ruined chapels and 
shrines, made this sojourn to the Brownings something to 
be treasured in memory forever. They even wandered to 
that beautiful old fifteenth-century church, Santa Maria 
delle Grazie Vallombrosella, "a daughter of the monastery 
of Vallombrosa," where were works of Robbia, and saw 




s ^-^ 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 99 

the blue hills rise out of the green forests in their infinite 
expanse. 

When they fared forth for Vallombrosa, it was at four 
o'clock in the morning, Mrs. Browning being all eagerness 
and enthusiasm for this matutinal pilgrimage. Reaching 
Pelago, their route wound for five miles along a ^^via 
non rotabile,^' through the most enchanting scenery, to 
Pontassieve. 

"Oh! such mountains," wrote Mrs. Browning of this never- 
to-be-forgotten journey, "as if the whole world were alive with 
mountains — such ravines — black in spite of flashing waters 
in them — such woods and rocks — traveled in basket sledges 
drawn by four white oxen — Wilson and I and the luggage — and 
Robert riding step by step. We were four hours doing the five 
miles, so you may fancy what rough work it was. Whether I 
was most tired or charmed was a tug between body and soul. 

"The worst was that," she continued, "there being a new 
abbot at the monastery — an austere man, jealous of his sanc- 
tity and the approach of women — our letter, and Robert's 
eloquence to boot, did nothing for us, and we were ingloriously 
and ignominiously expelled at the end of five days." 

While the Brownings were in Vallombrosa Arnould wrote 
to Alfred Domett: 

" Browning is spending a luxurious year in Italy — is, at this 
present writing, with his poetess bride dwelling in some hermit 
hut in Vallombrosa, where the Etruscan shades high overarched 
embower. He never fails to ask pressingly about you, and I 
give him all your messages. I would to God he would purge 
his style of obscurities, — that the wide world would, and the 
gay world and even the less illuminated part of the thinking 
world, know his greatness even as we do. I find myself reading 
'Paracelsus' and the 'Dramatic Lyrics' more often than any- 
thing else in verse." 

They descended, perforce, into Florence again, burning 
sunshine and all, the abbot of the monastery having some- 



loo THE BROWNINGS 

way confounded their pleadings with the temptation of St. 
Anthony, as something to be as heroically resisted. They 
set up their household gods in the shades of the Via delle 
Belle Donne, near the Duomo, where dinners, "unordered," 
Mrs. Browning said, "come through the streets, and spread 
themselves on our table, as hot as if we had smelt cutlets 
hours before." She found Florence "unspeakably beau- 
tiful," both by grace of nature and of art, but they planned 
to go to Rome in the early autumn, taking an apartment 
"over the Tarpeian rock." Later this plan was relinquished, 
and with an apartment on their hands for six months they 
yet abandoned it, for want of sunshine, and removed to 
Casa Guidi. 

"Think what we have done," wrote Mrs. Browning to Miss 
Mitford; "taken two houses, that is, two apartments, each for 
six months, pre-signing the contract. You will set it down to 
excellent poet's work in the way of domestic economy, but the 
fault was altogether mine, for my husband, to please me, took 
rooms with which I was not pleased for three days, through the 
absence of sunshine. The consequence was that we had to pay 
heaps of guineas away, for leave to go, ourselves, but you can 
scarcely fancy the wonderful difiference which the sun makes in 
Italy. So away we came into the blaze of him into the Piazza 
Pitti; precisely opposite the Grand Duke's palace; I with my 
remorse, and poor Robert without a single reproach. Any 
other man, a little lower than the angels, would have stamped 
and sworn a little for the mere relief of the thing, — but as for 
his being angry with me for any cause except not eating enough 
dinner, the said sun would turn the wrong way first." 

Mrs. Browning's dog, Flush, was a member of the house- 
hold not to be ignored, and her one source of consolation, in 
being turned away from the Vallombrosa summer, lay in 
the fact that "Flush hated it," and was frightened by the 
vast and somber pine forests, "Flush likes civilized life," 



THEIR LIFE AND ART loi 

said Mrs. Browning laughingly, ''and the society of little 
dogs with turned-up tails, such as abound in Florence." 

So now they bestowed themselves in "rooms yellow with 
sunshine from morning till night," in Casa Guidi, where, 
"for good omen," they looked down on the old gray church 
of San Felice. There was a large, square anteroom, where 
the piano was placed, with one large picture, picked up in an 
obscure street in Florence; and a little dining-room, whose 
walls were covered with tapestry, and where hung medal- 
lions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and of Robert Browning; a 
long, narrow room, wraith-like with plaster casts and busts, 
was Mr. Browning's study, v/hile she had her place in the 
large drawing-room, looking out upon the ancient church. 
Its old pictures of saints, gazing sadly from their sepulchral 
frames of black wood, with here and there a tapestry, and 
with the lofty, massive bookcases of Florentine carving, all 
gave the room a medieval look. Almost could one fancy 
that it enthroned the "fairy lady of Shalott," who might 
weave 

"... from day to day, 
A magic web of colors gay." 

Dante's grave profile, a cast of the face of Keats taken 
after death, and a few portraits of friends, added their in- 
terest to the atmosphere of a salon that seemed made for 
poets' uses. There were vast expanses of mirrors in the old 
carved Florentine frames, a colossal green velvet sofa, 
suggesting a catafalque, and a supernaturally deep easy- 
chair, in the same green velvet, which was Mrs. Browning's 
favorite seat when she donned her singing robes. Near this 
low arm-chair was always her little table, strewn with 
writing materials, books, and newspapers. Other tables in 
the salotto bore gayly bound volumes, the gifts of brother 
authors. On the floor of a bedroom were the arms (in sca- 
bola) , of the last count who had lived in this apartment, and 
there was a picturesque oil-jar, to hold rain-water, which 



ro2 THE BROWNINGS 

Mrs. Browning declared would just hold the Captain of 
the Forty Thieves, All in all, the poets vowed they would 
not change homes with the Grand Duke himself, who was 
their neighbor in the Palazzo Pitti at the distance of a 
stone's throw. In the late afternoons they would wander 
out to the Loggia dei Lanzi, where Mrs. Browning greatly 
admired Cellini's Perseus with the Head of Medusa, and 
they watched "the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to 
pure gold under the bridges." Sometimes they were joined 
by Hiram Powers, who was one of their earliest friends in 
Florence, "our chief friend and favorite," Mrs. Browning 
said of him, and she found him a "simple, straightforward, 
genial American, as simple as the man of genius he has 
proved himself need be." Another friend of these early 
days was Miss Boyle, a niece of the Earl of Cork, some- 
what a poet, withal, who, with her mother, was domiciled 
in the Villa Careggi, in which Lorenzo il Magnifico died, 
and which was loaned to the Boyles by Lord Holland. 
Miss Boyle frequently dropped in on them in the evening, 
"to catch us at hot chestnuts and mulled wine," said Mrs. 
Browning, "and a good deal of laughing she and Robert 
make between them." On the terrace of Casa Guidi orange 
trees and camellias bloomed, and the salons with their 
"rococo chairs, spring sofas, carved bookcases, and satin 
from Cardinals' beds," were a picturesque haunt. The 
ideal and poetic life of Mrs. Browning, so far from isolating 
her from the ordinary day and daylight duties, invested 
these, instead, with glow and charm and playful repartee; 
and, indeed, her never-failing sense of humor transformed 
any inconvenience or inadvertence into amusement. She, 
who is conceded to have written the finest sonnets since 
Shakespeare, could also mend a coat for her husband with 
a smile and a Greek epigram. 

Joseph Arnould again wrote to their mutual friend, 
Domett: 




GUERCrNO. 



The Guardian Angel, 
church of san agostino, fano, italy 



"Guercitto drew Ih's angel I saw t^ah 
(Alfred, dear friend !) that little cltilJ to pay. 



T'.ie Guardian Anj;el • A Picture nt Fano. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 103 

"Browning and his wife are still in Florence; both ravished 
with Italy and Italian life; so much so, that I think for some 
years they will make it the Paradise of their poetical exile. I 
hold fast to my faith in 'Paracelsus.' Browning and Carlyle 
are my two crowning men amongst the highest English minds 
of the day. Third comes Alfred Tennyson. . . . By-the-bye, 
did you ever happen upon Browning's 'Pauline'? a strange, 
wild (in parts singularly magnificent) poet-biography; his own 
early h'fe as it presented itself to his own soul viewed poetically; 
in fact, psychologically speaking, his 'Sartor Resartus'; it was 
written and published three years before 'Paracelsus,' when 
Shelley was his God." 

A little later Arnould wrote again: 

"Browning and his wife are still in Florence, and stay there 
till the summer; he is bringing out another edition of his poems 
(except 'Sordello'), Chapman and Hall being his publishers, 
Moxon having dechned. He writes always most affectionately, 
and never forgets kind inquiries about and kind messages to 
you." 

Allured by resplendent tales of Fano, the Brownings 
made a trip to that seaside hamlet, but found it unin- 
habitable in the late summer heat. A statue in the Piazza 
commemorated the ancient Fanum FortuncB of tradition, 
and in the cathedral of San Fortunato were frescoes by 
Domenichino, and in the chiesa of Sant' Agostino was the 
celebrated painting of Sant' Angelo Custode, by Guercino, 
which suggested to Browning his poem "The Guardian 
Angel." The tender constancy of Browning's friendship 
for Alfred Domett is in evidence in this poem, and the 
beauty of his reference to his wife, — 

"My angel with me, too, . . ." 

lingers with the reader. 

In no poem of his entire work has Browning given so 
complete a revelation of his own inner life as in this memo- 



104 THE BROWNINGS 

rable lyric. The picture, dim as is the light in which it is 
seen, is one of the most impressive of all Guercino's works. 
In the little church of San Paterniano is a "Marriage of the 
Virgin," by Guercino, and in the Palazzo del Municipio 
of Fano is Guercino's "Betrothal of the Virgin," and the 
"David " of Domenichino. 

The Brownings while in Fano made the excursion to the 
summit of Monte Giove, an hour's drive from the Piazza, 
where was the old monastery and a wonderful view of the 
Adriatic, and of the panorama of the Apennines. "We 
fled from Fano after three days," wrote Mrs. Browning, 
"and finding ourselves cheated out of our dream of summer 
coolness, we resolved on substituting for it what the Ital- 
ians call 'un bel giro J So we went to Ancona . . . where 
we stayed a week, Hving on fish and cold water." They 
found Ancona "a straggHng sea city, holding up against the 
brown rocks, and elbowing out the purple tides," and Mrs. 
Browning felt ail inclination to visit it again when they 
might find a Httle air and shadow. They went on to Loreto, 
and then to Ravenna, where in the early dawn of a summer 
morning they stood by the tomb of Dante, deeply touched 
by the inscription. All through this journey they had 
"wonderful visions of beauty and glory." Returning to 
Florence, to their terraces, orange trees, and divine sunsets, 
one of their earliest visitors in Casa Guidi was Father Prout, 
who had chanced to be standing on the dock at Livorno 
when they first landed in Italy, from the journey from 
France, and who now appeared in Florence on his way to 
Rome. Mr. Browning had fallen ill after their trip to Fano, 
and Father Prout prescribed for him "port wine and eggs," 
which regime, combined with [the racy conversation of the 
genial priest, seemed efficacious. 

In the meantime Mrs. Browning stood with her husband 
by the tomb of Michael Angelo in Santa Croce; she saw 
the Venus, the "divine Raphaels." The Peruzzi chapel 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 105 

had then recently been restored — some exquisite frescoes 
by Giotto being among the successful restorations. The 
"mountainous marble masses" of the Duomo, " tessellated 
marbles climbing into the sky, self-crowned with that 
prodigy of marble domes," struck Mrs. Browning as the 
wonder of all architecture. 

The political conditions of Italy began to enlist her in- 
terest. In June of 1846 Pio Nono had ascended the Papal 
throne, preceded by a reputation for a liberal policy, and 
it was even hoped that he would not oppose the formation 
of a United Italy. The papal and the temporal govern- 
ment was still one, but Pius IX was a statesman as well as 
a churchman. England had especially commissioned Lord 
Minto to advocate reform, and the enthusiasts for Italian 
liberty received him with acclaim. The disasters of 1848 
were still in the unrevealed future, and a new spirit was 
stirring all over the Italian kingdom. Piedmont was looked 
to with hope; and the Grand Duke of Tuscany had instituted 
a National Guard, as the first step toward popular govern- 
ment. The great topic of the day was the new hope of 
Italy. In Florence the streets and piazzas were vocal with 
praises of the Grand Duke. On one night that Browning 
went to the opera the tumult grew intense, and the Duke 
was escorted back to Palazzo Pitti with thousands of wax 
torchlights and a blaze of glory and cries of "Eviva! 
Eviva!" Browning, however, distrusted Pio Nono, think- 
ing him weak, and events proved that his opinion was 
justified. 

The winter of 1847-1848 was passed by the Brownings in 
Casa Guidi. "I wish you could see what rooms we have," 
wrote Mrs. Browning to her husband's sister, Sarianna: 
"what ceilings, what height and breadth, what a double 
terrace for orange trees; how cool, how likely to be warm, 
how perfect every way!" 

The poets were constantly engaged in their work. Mrs. 



io6 THE BROWNINGS 

Browning began her long poem, "Casa Guidi Windows," 
and many of Browning's lyrics that appeared in the collec- 
tion called "Men and Women" were written at this period. 
They passed much time in the galleries and churches. They 
drove in the beautiful environs of Florence. The pictures, 
history, and legends entered into their lives to serve in later 
days as poetic material. In the brief twilight of winter 
days they often strolled into the old gray church of San 
Felice, on which their windows looked out, where Brown- 
ing would gratify his passion for music by evolving from the 
throbbing keys of the organ some faint Toccata of Galuppi's, 
while his wife smiled and listened, and the tide of Florentine 
life flowed by in the streets outside. Casa Guidi is almost 
opposite the Palazzo Pitti, so that Mrs. Browning had easy 
access to her beloved Madonnas in the Pitti gallery, which 
to her husband, also, was so unfailing a resource. 

One of Mrs. Browning's American admirers, and one of 
the reviewers of her poems, George Stillman Hillard, 
visited Florence that winter, and passed more than one 
evening in Casa Guidi with the Brownings. Of Mrs. 
Browning he wrote: 

"Mrs. Browning is in many respects the correlative of her 
husband. ... I have never seen a human frame which seemed 
so nearly a transparent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit. 
She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl. . . . Nor is she 
more remarkable for genius and learning than for sweetness of 
temper, tenderness of heart, depth of feeling, and purity of 
spirit. ... A union so complete as theirs — in which the mind 
has nothing to crave, nor the heart to sigh for — is cordial to 
behold and cheering to remember." 

Of all Italy Mr. Hillard perhaps best loved Florence, 
finding there an indescribable charm, "a blending of pres- 
ent beauty and traditional interest; but then Florence is 
alive," he added, "and not enslaved." It was probably 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 107 

Hillard who suggested to William Wetmore Story that he 
should meet Browning. At all events this meeting took 
place, initiating the friendship that endured "forty years, 
without a break," and that was one of the choicest social 
companionships. 

The spring of 1849 brought new joy to Casa Guidi, for 
on March 9 was born their son, who was christened Robert 
Wiedemann Barrett, the middle name (which in his man- 
hood he dropped) being the maiden name of the poet's 
mother. The passion of both husband and wife for poetry 
was now quite equaled by that for parental duties, which 
they ''caught up," said Mrs. Browning, ''with a kind of 
rapture." Mr. Browning would walk the terraces where 
orange trees and oleanders blossomed, with the infant in 
his arms, and in the summer, when they visited Spezzia, 
and the haunt of Shelley at Lurici, they wandered five miles 
into the mountains, the baby with them, on horseback 
and donkey-back. The child grew rounder and rosier; 
and Mrs. Browning was able to cUmb hills and help her 
husband to lose himself in the forests. 

The death of Browning's mother immediately after the 
birth of his son was a great sadness to the poet, and one 
fully shared by his wife, who wrote to Miss Browning: 
"I grieve with you, as well as for you; for though I never 
saw her face, I loved that pure and tender spirit. . . . 
Robert and I dwell on the hope that you and your father 
will come to us at once. ... If Florence is too far off, is 
there any other place where we could meet and arrange 
for the future?" 

The Brownings went for the summer to Bagni di Lucca, 
after the little detour on the Mediterranean coast, where 
they lingered in the white marble mountains of Carrara. In 
Lucca they passed long summer hours in the beautiful 
Duomo, which had been consecrated by Pope Alexander II 
in the eleventh century. The beauty and the solitude 



io8 THE BROWNINGS 

charmed the poets; the little Penini was the "most 
popular of babies," and when Wilson carried the child out 
in the sunshine the Italians would crowd around him and 
exclaim, ^^Che bel bambino! " They had given him the pet 
Italian name "Penini," which always persisted. The 
Austrians had then taken possession of Florence, and Leo- 
poldo, "L'intrepido," as the Itahans asserted, remained 
quietly in the Palazzo Pitti. Browning, writing to Mrs. 
Jameson, says there is little for his wife to tell, "for she is 
not Hkely to encroach upon my story which I could tell of 
her entirely angel nature, as divine a heart as God ever 
made." The poet with his wife and Wilson and the baby 
made almost daily excursions into the forests and moun- 
tains, up precipitous fays and over headlong ravines; dining 
"with the goats," while the baby "lay on a shawl, rolling 
and laughing." The contrast of this mountain-climbing 
Mrs. Browning, with her husband and child, and the Miss 
Barrett of three or four years before, lying on a sofa in a 
darkened room, is rather impressive. The picture of one 
day is suggested by Mrs. Browning's description in a 
letter to Miss Mitford, where she writes: 

"... I have performed a great exploit, ridden on a donkey 
five miles deep into the mountains, to an almost inaccessible 
volcanic ground not far from the stars. Robert on horseback, 
Wilson and the nurse with baby, on other donkeys; guides, of 
course. We set oflf at eight in the morning and returned at 
six p. M., after dining on the mountain pinnacle. . . . The 
scenery, sublime and wonderful, . . . innumerable mountains 
bound faintly with the gray sea, and not a human habitation." 

It was during this villeggiatura that Mrs. Browning, one 
morning after their breakfast, with shy sweetness, tucked 
the pages of the "Sonnets" into her husband's pocket 
and swiftly vanished. Robert Barrett Browning, who, as 
already noted, gave the history of this poetic interlude viva 
voce, has also recorded it in writing, as follows: 




Monument to D.\nte, in the Pi.\zza di Santa Croce. 
Stefano Ricci. 

" . . . . The architect and hevjer 

Did pile the empty marbles as thy tomb." 

Casa Guidi Windows. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 109 

"I gladly proffer an account of the way in which the 'Sonnets 
from the Portuguese' first became known to him to whom 
they were addressed. And I do so the more willingly since it 
differs in essential points from other versions which have been 
given. To accomplish this in the fewest and best words for the 
purpose, the following portion may be quoted from a letter 
written by my father in reply to a friendly inquiry dated March 
10, 1881." 

Mr. Barrett Browning then quotes his father as saying: 

"The 'Sonnets' were only known to exist and seen for the 
first time by the person to whom they were addressed, two or 
three years after the writer's marriage. The reticency came of 
some misunderstood remark which seemed to doubt the depth 
and sincerity of such feelings so exhibited in verse. Fortunately, 
some other long subsequent conversation did more justice to an 
exceptional case, and the next morning the writer of the ' Son- 
nets ' said: 'Do you know I once wrote some verses to you?' 

" This was at the Bagni di Lucca after the birth of our child, a 
few months before. The poems were only printed at my earnest 
entreaty. I consider that the poor fancy that I might seem too 
anxious for my own self-glorification, as people would perhaps 
suppose, ought not to prevail against all that power and beauty 
— however unworthy the subject they had been bestowed upon." 

Mr. Barrett Browning adds: 

"It may perhaps be mentioned here that the writer of the 
* Sonnets ' was playfully called by him his ' little Portuguese ' in 
connection with her poem, ' Catarina to Camoens,' whence the 
title chosen for the Sonnets, which, when they were published, 
afforded a veil, however slight, to conceal the identity of the 
author." 

With the united authority of both Robert Browning and 
his son, there can be no further doubt that it was at Bagni 
di Lucca, in the summer of 1849, that Browning first re- 
ceived these immortal "Sonnets." 



no THE BROWNINGS 

What earthly vocabulary can offer fit words in which to 
speak of celestial beauty? How these exquisite "Sonnets " 
tell the story of that romance of Genius and Love, — from 
the woman's first thrill of interest in the poetry of an un- 
known poet, to the hour when he, "the princely giver," 
brought to her "the gold and purple " of his heart 

" For such as I to take or leave withal," 

and she questions 

" Can it be right to give what I can give? " 

with the fear that her delicacy of health should make such 
gifts 

" Be counted with the ungenerous." 

But she thinks of how he "was in the world a year ago," 
and thus she drinks 

"Of life's great cup of wonder! Wonderful, 
Never to feel thee thrill the day or night 
With personal act or speech, — 



. . . Atheists are as dull, 

Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight." 

And the questioning, — 

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. 
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height 
My soul can reach, . . . 
... I love thee with the breath, 
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose, 
I shall but love thee better after death." 

Returning to Florence in October, Browning soon began 
the preparation for his poem, "Christmas Eve and Easter 
Day," and Mrs. Browning arranged for a new one-volume 
edition of her poems, to include "The Seraphim," and the 
poems that had appeared in the same volume, and also the 
poems appearing in 1844, many of them revised. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART iir 

Marchesa d'Ossoli, whom the Brownings had heretofore 
known as Margaret Fuller, surprised them by appearing in 
Florence with her husband and child, the private marriage 
having taken place some two years before. The Greenoughs, 
the Storys, and Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Pearse Cranch 
were all in Florence, and were all habitues of Casa Guidi. 
Mr. Cranch, poet, painter, and musician, was the kindly 
friend of Longfellow and of Lowell in their Cambridge 
homes, and the Greenoughs and Storys were also of the 
Cambridge circle. To friends at home the Marchesa wrote 
of going to the opera with the Greenoughs, and that she saw 
the Brownings often, "and I love and admire them more and 
more," she continued. "Mr. Browning enriches every hour 
passed with him, and he is a most true, cordial, and noble 
man." 

The Florentine days have left their picturings: Mr. 
Story opens a studio, and while he is modeling, Mrs. Story 
reads to him from Monckton Milnes's Life of Keats, which 
Mr. Browning loaned them. Mrs. Story drives to Casa 
Guidi to carry Mrs. Browning her copy of "Jane Eyre," 
and Mrs. Greenough takes both Mrs. Story and Mrs. 
Browning to drive in the Cascine. Two American painters, 
Frank Boott and Frank Heath, are in Florence, and are 
more or less caught up in the Casa Guidi life; and the 
coterie all go to Mrs. Trollope's to see fancy costumes ar- 
ranged for a ball to be given at Sir George Hamilton's. In 
one of the three villas on Bellosguardo Miss Isa Blagden 
was now domiciled. For more than a quarter of a century 
Miss Blagden was a central figure in English society in 
Florence. She became Mrs. Browning's nearest and most 
intimate friend, and she was the ardently prized friend of 
the Trollopes also, and of Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who 
shared her villa during one spring when Florence was in 
her most radiant beauty. "Isa was a very bright, warm- 
hearted, clever little woman," said Thomas Adolphus Trol- 



112 THE BROWNINGS 

lope of her; "who knew everybody, and was, I think, more 
universally beloved among us than any other individual." 
Miss Blagden had written one or two novels, of little claim, 
however, and after her death a small volume of her poems 
was published, but all these had no more than the mere 
succes d'estime, as apparently the pen was with her, as with 
Margaret Fuller, a non-conductor; but as a choice spirit, 
of the most beautiful and engaging qualities of compan- 
ionship, "Isa," as she was always caressingly called, is still 
held in memory. Madame Pasquale Villari, the wife of the 
great historian and the biographer of Machiavelli and of 
Savonarola, well remembers Miss Blagden, who died, indeed, 
in her arms in the summer of 1872. 

The intimate friendship between Mrs. Browning and 
Miss Blagden was initiated in the early months of the resi- 
dence of the Brownings in Florence; but it was in this 
winter of 1849-18 50 that they began to see each other so 
constantly. The poems of Matthew Arnold were pubhshed 
that winter, among which Mrs. Browning especially liked 
"The Deserted Merman" and "The Sick King of Bok- 
kara," and about this time the authorship of "Jane Eyre " 
was revealed, and Charlotte Bronte discovered under the 
nom-de-plume of Currer Bell. 

During the time that Mrs. Browning had passed at Tor- 
quay, before her marriage, she had met Theodosia Garrow, 
whose family were on intimate terms with Mr. Kenyon. 
Miss Barrett and Miss Garrow became friends, and when 
they met again it was in Florence, Miss Garrow having 
become the wife of Thomas Adolphus Trollope. Hiram 
Powers in these days was domiciled in the Via dei Serragli, 
in close proximity to Casa Guidi, and he frequently dropped 
in to have his morning coffee with the Brownings. 

Landor had been for some years in his villa on the Fieso- 
lean slope, not far from Maiano, where Leigh Hunt had 
wandered, dreaming of Boccaccio. Two scenes of the 




The Pal.\zzo Vecchio, Florence. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 113 

" Decameron " were laid in this region, and the deep ravine 
at the foot of one of the neighboring hills was the original 
of the "Valley of the Ladies." Not far away had been the 
house of MachiavelH ; and nestling among the blue hills was 
the little white village of Settignano, where Michael Angelo 
was born. Leigh Hunt had been on terms of the most 
cordial intimacy with Landor, whom he described as "liv- 
ing among his paintings and hospitaUties "; and Landor 
had also been visited by Emerson, and by Lord and Lady 
Blessington, by Nathaniel Parker Willis (introduced by 
Lady Blessington), by Greenough, Francis and JuUus Hare, 
and by that universal friend of every one, Mr. Kenyon, all 
before the arrival of the Brownings in Florence. Landor 
had, however, been again in England for several years, 
where Browning and Miss Barrett had both met and ad- 
mired him, as has been recorded. 

The Florence on which the Brownings had entered dif- 
fered little from the Florence of to-day. The Palazzo Pitti, 
within a stone's throw of Casa Guidi, stood in the same 
Cyclopean massiveness as now; the piazza and church of 
San Miniato, cypress-shaded, rose from the sweep of the 
hills, and the miraculous crucifix of San Giovanni Gualberto 
was then, as now, an object of pilgrimage. The wonder 
of the ItaUan sunsets, that "perished silently of their own 
glory," burned away over the far hills, and the strange, 
lofty tower of the Palazzo Vecchio caught the Hngering rays. 
Beyond the Porta Romana, not far from Casa Guidi, was 
the road to the Val d'Emo, where the Certosa crowns an 
eminence. The stroll along the Arno at sunset was a favor- 
ite one with the poets, and in late afternoons they often 
chmbed the slope to the Boboli Gardens for the view over 
Florence and the Val d'Arno. Nor did they ever tire of 
lingering in the Piazza della Signoria, before the marvelous 
palace with its medieval tower, and standing before the 
colossal fountain of Neptune, just behind the spot that is 



114 THE BROWNINGS 

commemorated by a tablet in the pavement marking the 
martyrdom of Savonarola. The great equestrian statue of 
Cosimo*' J <^lways engaged their attention in this historic 
piazza, which for four centuries had been the center of 
the political life of the Florentines. All these placec, the 
churches, monuments, palaces, and the art of Florence, were 
fairly mirrored in the minds of the wedded poets, impress- 
ing their imagination with the fidelity of an image falling 
on a sensitized plate. To them, as to all who love and enter 
into the ineffable beauty of the City of Lilies, it was an 
atmosphere of enchantment. 



CHAPTER VII 
1850 -1855 

" I heard last night a little child go singing 
'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church, 
bella libertd, O bella / . . . " 

"But Easter-Day breaks! But 
Christ rises! Mercy every way 
Is infinite, — and who can say?" 

"Casa Guidi Windows" — Society in Florence — Maschesa 
d'Ossoli — Browning's Poetic Creed — Villeggiatxjra in 
Siena — Venice — Brilliant Life in London — Paris and 
MiLSAND — Browning on Shelley — In Florence — Idyllic 
Days in Bagni di Lucca — Mrs. Browning's Spiritual 
Outlook — Delightful Winter in Rome — A Poetic Pil- 
grimage — Harriet Hosmer — Characteristics of Mrs. 
Browning. 

The Brownings were never for a moment caught up in the 
wave of popular enthusiasm for Pic Nono that swept over 
Italy. Yet Mrs. Browning confessed herself as having been 
fairly "taken in" by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Had 
Blackwood's Magazine published Part I of her "Casa Guidi 
Windows " at the time that she sent it to this periodical, the 
poem would have been its own proof of her distrust of the 
Pope, but it would also have offered the same proof of her 
ill-founded trust in the Grand Duke; so that, on the whole, 
she was well content to fail in having achieved the distinc- 
tion of a prophet regarding Pio Nono, as no Cassandra can 
afford to be convicted of delusion in some portion of the 



ii6 THE BROWNINGS 

details of her prophecy. To achieve lasting reputation as 
a soothsayer, the prophecy must be accurate throughout. 
The fact that there was an interval of three years between 
the first and the second parts of this poem accounts for 
the discrepancy between them. In her own words she 
confessed: 

" I wrote a meditation and a dream, 

Hearing a litde child sing in the street: 
I leant upon his music as a theme. 

Till it gave way beneath my heart's full beat 
Which tried at an exultant prophecy, 

But dropped before the measure was complete — 
Alas for songs and hearts! O Tuscany, 

O Dante's Florence, is the type too plain? " 

The flashing lightnings of a betrayed people gleam like 
an unsheathed sword in another canto beginning: 

"From Casa Guidi windows I looked forth, 
And saw ten thousand eyes of Florentines 
Flash back the triumph of the Lombard north." 

These ardent lines explain how she had been misled, for 
who could dream at the time that Leopold© ("I'lntrepido," 
as a poet of Viareggio called him in a truly Italian fervor of 
enthusiasm) could have proved himself a traitor to these 
trusting people, — these tender-hearted, gentle, courteous, 
refined Italians? All these attributes pre-eminently charac- 
terize the people; but also Mrs. Browning's insight that 
"the patriots are not instructed, and the instructed are 
not patriots," was too true. The adherents of the papal 
power were strong and influential, and the personal char- 
acter, whatever might be said of his political principles, 
— the personal character of Pio Nono was singularly win- 
ning, and this was by no means a negligible factor in the 
great problem then before Italy. 

Mrs. Browning very wisely decided to let "Casa Guidi 
Windows" stand as written, with all the inconsistency be- 




Statue of Savonarola, by E. Pazzi, 

IN THE SALA DEI CINQUECENTO, PALAZZO VECCHIO. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 117 

tween its first and second parts, as each reflected what she 
believed true at the time of writing; and it thus presents a 
most interesting and suggestive commentary on ItaHan 
poUtics between 1850 and 1853. Its discrepancies are such 
*'as we are called upon to accept at every hour by the con- 
ditions of our nature," she herself said of it, ''implying the 
interval between aspiration and performance, between 
faith and disillusion, between hope and fact." This discrep- 
ancy was more painful to her than it can be even to the 
most critical reader; but the very nature of the poem, its 
very fidelity to the conditions and impressions of the 
moment, give it great value, though these impressions were 
to be modified or canceled by those of a later time; it should 
stand as it is, if given to the world at all. And the courage 
to avow one's self mistaken is not the least of the forms 
that moral courage may assume. 

Regarding Pio Nono, Mrs. Browning is justified by his- 
tory, notwithstanding the many amiable and beautiful 
qualities of the Pontiff which forever assure him a place in 
affection, if not in political confidence. Even his most 
disastrous errors were the errors of judgment rather than 
those of conscious intention. Pio Nono had the defects of 
his quaHties, but loving and reverent pilgrimages are con- 
stantly made to that Httle chapel behind the iron railing 
in the old church of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura in Rome 
(occupying the site of the church founded by Constantine) , 
where his body is entombed in a marble sarcophagus of 
the plainest design according to his own instructions; 
but the interior of the vestibule is richly decorated with 
mosaic paintings, the tribute of those who loved him. 

Leopoldo was so kindly a man, so sincere in his work 
for the Hberty of the press and for other important reforms, 
that it is no marvel that Mrs. Browning invested him. with 
resplendence of gifts he did not actually possess, but which 
it was only logical to feel that such a man must have. Some? . 



ii8 THE BROWNINGS 

times a too complete reliance on the ex pede Eerculem 
method of judgment is misleading. 

While the cause of ItaUan liberty had the entire sympa- 
thy of Robert Browning, he was yet little moved to use it 
as a poetic motive. Professor Hall Griffin suggests that it 
is possible that Browning deliberately chose not to enter a 
field which his wife so particularly made her own ; but that 
is the less tenable as they never discussed their poetic work 
with each other, and as a rule rarely showed to each other 
a single poem until it was completed. 

The foreign society in Florence at this time included 
some delightful American sojourners, for, beside the 
Storys and Hiram Powers (an especial friend of the Brown- 
ings), there were George S. HiUard, George William Curtis, 
and the Marchesa d'Ossoli with her husband, — all of 
whom were welcomed at Casa Guidi. The English society 
then in Florence was, as Mrs. Browning wrote to Miss Mit- 
ford, "kept up much after the old English models, with a 
proper disdain for continental simplicities of expense; and 
neither my health nor our pecuniary circumstances," she 
says, "would admit of our entering it. The fact is, we are 
not like our child, who kisses everybody who smiles on him! 
You can scarcely imagine to yourself how we have retreated 
from the kind advances of the English here, and strug- 
gled with hands and feet to keep out of this gay society." 
But it is alluring to imagine the charm of their chosen 
circle, the Storys always first and nearest, and these other 
gifted and interesting friends. 

Mr. Story is so universally thought of as a sculptor that 
it is not always realized how eminent he was in the world of 
letters as well. Two volumes of his poems contain many 
of value, and a few, as the "Cleopatra," "An Estrange- 
ment," and the immortal "lo Victis," that the world would 
not willingly let die; his "Roba di Roma " is one of those 
absolutely indispensable works regarding the Eternal City; 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 119 

and several other books of his, in sketch and criticism, en- 
rich literature. A man of the most courtly and distin- 
guished manner, of flawless courtesy, an artist of affluent 
expressions, it is not difficult to realize how congenial and 
deUghtful was his companionship, as well as that of his ac- 
complished wife, to the Brownings. Indeed, no biographi- 
cal record could be made of either household, with any com- 
pleteness, that did not largely include the other. In all the 
lovely chronicles of hterature and Hfe there is no more beau- 
tiful instance of an almost Hfelong friendship than that 
between Robert Browning and William Wetmore Story. 

In this spring of 1850 Browning was at work on his 
"Christmas Eve and Easter Day," and Casa Guidi pre- 
served a liberal margin of quiet and seclusion. *'You can 
scarcely imagine," wrote Mrs. Browning, "the retired life 
we live. . . . We drive day by day through the lovely 
Cascine, only sweeping through the city. Just such a 
window where Bianca Capello looked out to see the Duke 
go by, — and just such a door where Tasso stood, and 
where Dante drew his chair out to sit." 

When Curtis visited Florence he wrote to Browning beg- 
ging to be permitted to call, and he was one of the wel- 
comed visitors in Casa Guidi. Browning took him on 
many of those romantic excursions with which the environs 
of Florence abound, — to Settignano, where Michael Angelo 
was born; to the old Roman amphitheater in Fiesole; to 
that somber, haunted summit of San Miniato, and to Val- 
lombrosa, where he played to Curtis some of the old Grego- 
rian chants on an organ in the monastery. Afterward, in 
a conversation with Longfellow, Mr. Curtis recalled a 
hymn by Pergolese that Browning had played for him. 

Tennyson's poem, "The Princess," went into the third 
edition that winter, and Mrs. Browning observed that she 
knew of no poet, having claim solely through poetry, who 
had attained so certain a success with so little delay. 



I20 THE BROWNINGS 

Hearing that Tennyson had remarked that the public 
"hated poetry," Mrs. Browning commented that, "divine 
poet as he was, and no laurel being too leafy for him," he 
must yet be unreasonable if he were not gratified with 
**so immediate and so conspicuous a success." 

Browning's "imprisoned splendor" found expression 
that winter in several lyrics, which were included in the 
new (two volume) edition of his poems. 

Among these were the "Meeting at Night," "Parting at 
Morning," "A Woman's Last Word," and "Evelyn Hope." 
"Love among the Ruins," "Old Pictures in Florence," 
"Saul," and his "A Toccata of Galuppi's," all belong to 
this group. In that ardent love poem, "A Woman's Last 
Word," occur the lines: 

"Teach me, only teach, Love! 
As I ought 
I will speak thy speech, Love, 
Think thy thought — 

" Meet, if thou require it, 
Both demands, 
Laying flesh and spirit 
In thy hands." 

No lyric that Robert Browning ever wrote is more 
haunting in its power and sweetness, or more rich in sig- 
nificance, than "Evelyn Hope," with "that piece of gera- 
nium flower " in the glass beside her beginning to die. The 
whole scene is suggested by this one detail, and in charac- 
terization of the young girl are these inimitable lines, — 

"The good stars met in your horoscope. 
Made you of spirit, fire, and dew — 



Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, 
Either I missed or itself missed me; 




Fresco of Dante, by Giotto, in the Bargello, Florence. 

" ' . . . . With a softer brow 
Than Giotto drew upon the wall." 

Casa Guidi Windows. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 121 

So, hush, — I will give you this leaf to keep; 

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand! 
There, that is our secret: go to sleep! 

You will wake, and remember, and understand." 

Mrs. Browning's touching lyric, "A Child's Grave at 
Florence," was published in the AthencBum that winter; 
and in this occur the simple but appealing stanzas, — 

"Oh, my own baby on my knees, 
My leaping, dimpled treasure, 



But God gives patience. Love learns strength, 
And Faith remembers promise; 

Still mine! maternal rights serene 

Not given to another! 
The crystal bars shine faint between 

The souls of child and mother." 

To this day, that Uttle grave in the English cemetery in 
Florence, with its "A. A. E. C." is sought out by the vis- 
itor. To Mrs. Browning the love for her own child taught 
her the love of all mothers. In " Only a Curl " are the lines: 

"O children! I never lost one, — 
But my arm 's round my own Httle son, 
And Love knows the secret of Grief." 

Florence "bristled with cannon" that vdnter, but noth- 
ing decisive occurred. The faith of the Italian people in 
Pio Nono, however, grew less. Mr. Kirkup, the antiqua- 
rian, still carried on his controversy with Bezzi as to which 
of them were the more entitled to the glory of discovering 
the Dante portrait, and in the spring there occurred the 
long-deferred marriage of Mrs. Browning's sister Henrietta 
to Captain Surtees Cook, the attitude of Mr. Barrett being 
precisely the same as on the marriage of his daughter EHza- 
beth to Robert Browning. The death of Wordsworth was 
another of the events of this spring, leaving vacant the 
Laureateship. The Athenceum at once advocated the ap- 



122 THE BROWNINGS 

pointment of Mrs. Browning, as one "eminently suitable 
under a female sovereign." Other literary authorities 
coincided with this view, it seeming a sort of poetic justice 
that a woman poet should be Laureate to a Queen. The 
Athenceum asserted that "there is no living poet of either 
sex who can prefer a higher claim than Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning," but the honor was finally conferred upon Ten- 
nyson, with the ardent approbation of the Brownings, who 
felt that his claim was rightly paramount. 

In the early summer the Marchese and Marchesa 
d'Ossoli, with their child, sailed on that ill-starred voyage 
whose tragic ending startled the literary world of that 
day. Their last evening in Florence was passed with the 
Brownings. The Marchesa expressed a fear of the voyage 
that, after its fatal termination, was recalled by her friends 
as being almost prophetic. Curiously she gave a little Bible 
to the infant son of the poets as a presentation from her 
own little child; and Robert Barrett Browning still treas- 
ures, as a strange reHc, the book on whose fly-leaf is written 
"In memory of Angelino d'Ossoli." Mrs. Browning had a 
true regard for the Marchesa, of whom she spoke as " a very 
interesting person, thoughtful, spiritual, in her habitual 
mode of mind." 

In his poetic creed. Browning deprecated nothing more 
entirely (to use a mild term where a stronger would not be 
inappropriate) than that the poet should reveal his per- 
sonal feeling in his poem; and to the dramatic character 
of his own work he held tenaciously. He rebuked the 
idea that Shakespeare "unlocked his heart " to his read- 
ers, and he warns them off from the use of any fancied latch- 
key to his own inner citadel. 

"Which of you did I enable 

Once to slip inside my breast, 
There to catalogue and label 

What I like least, what love best?" 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 123 

And in another poem the reader will recall how fervently 
he thanks God that "even the meanest of His creatures " 

"Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, 
One to show a woman when he loves her!" 

It was the knowledge of this intense and pervading con- 
viction of her husband's that kept Mrs. Browning so long 
from showing to him her exquisitely tender and sacred self- 
revelation in the "Sonnets from the Portuguese." Yet 
it was in that very "One Word More " where Browning 
thanks God for the "two soul-sides," that he most simply 
reveals himself, and also in "Prospice " and in this "Christ- 
mas Eve and Easter Day." This poem, with its splendor of 
vision, was published in 1850, with an immediate sale of 
two hundred copies, after which for the time the demand 
ceased. William Sharp well designates it as a "remarkable 
Apologia for Christianity," for it can be almost thought of 
in connection with Newman's "Apologia pro vita sua," 
and as not remote from the train of speculative thought 
which Matthew Arnold wrought into his "Literature and 
Dogma." It is very impressive to see how the very con- 
tent of Hegelian Dialectic is the key-note of Browning's 
art. "The concrete and material content of a life of per- 
fected knowledge and voHtion means one thing, only, 
love," teaches Hegelian philosophy. This, too, is the entire 
message of Browning's poetry. Man must love God in the 
imperfect manifestation which is all he can offer of God. 
He must relate the imperfect expression to the perfect 
aspiration. 

"All I aspired to be 
And was not — comforts me." 

In the unfaltering search for the Divine Ideal is the true 
reward. 

"One great aim, like a guiding star, above — 
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift 
His manhood to the height that takes the prize. " 



124 THE BROWNINGS 

Browning conceived and presented the organic idea and 
ideal of life, in its fullness, its intensity, as perhaps few 
poets have ever done. He would almost place a positive 
sin above a negative virtue. To live intensely, even if it 
be sinfully, was to Browning's vision to be on the upward 
way, rather than to be in a state of negative good. The 
spirit of man is its own witness of the presence of God. 
Life cannot be truly lived in any fantastic isolation. 

"Just when we're safest, there's a sunset touch, 
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, 
A chorus ending from Euripides." 

With Browning, as with Spinoza, there is an impatience, 
too, with the perpetual references to death, and they both 
constantly turn to the everlasting truth of life. "It is 
this harping on death that I despise so much," exclaimed 
Browning, in the later years of his life, in a conversation 
with a friend. "In fiction, in poetry, in art, in literature 
this shadow of death, call it what you will, — despair, 
negation, indifference, — is upon us. But what fools who 
talk thus! . . . WTiy, death is life, just as our daily 
momentarily dying body is none the less alive, and ever 
recruiting new forces of existence. ^ Without death, which 
is our word for change, for growth, there could be no pro- 
longation of that which we call life." 

After the completion of "Christmas Eve and Easter 
Day," Mrs. Browning questioned her husband about the 
apparent asceticism of the second part of the poem, and 
he replied that he meant it to show only one side of the 
matter. "Don't think," she wrote to a friend, "that Rob- 
ert has taken to the cilix, — indeed he has not, but it is his 
way to see things as passionately as other people feel them." 

Browning teaches in this poem that faith is an adventure 
of the spirit, the aspiration felt, even if imnamed. But as 
to renunciation, — 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 125 

"'Renounce the world!' — Ah, were it done 
By merely cutting one by one 
Your limbs off, with your wise head last, 
How easy were it!" 

The renunciation that the poet sees is not so simple. It 
is not to put aside all the allurements of life, but to use 
them nobly; to persist in the life of the spirit, to offer 
love for hatred, truth for falsehood, generous self-sacrifice 
rather than to grasp advantages, — to live, not to forsake 
the common daily lot. It is, indeed, the philosophy am- 
plified that is found in the words of Jesus, *'I pray not that 
Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou 
shouldest keep them from the evil." 

The Brownmgs remained till late in the summer in their 
Casa Guidi home, detained at first by the illness of Mrs. 
Browning, after which they decided to postpone going to 
England until another year. In the late summer they went 
for a few weeks to Siena, where, two miles outside the walls, 
they found a seven-roomed villa with a garden and vine- 
yard and oHve orchard, and "a magnificent view of a noble 
sweep of country, undulating hills and verdure, and on 
one side the great Maremma extending to the foot of the 
Roman mountains." They were located on a Httle hill 
called Poggia dei venti, with all the winds of the heavens, 
indeed, blowing about them, and with overflowing quan- 
tities of milk and bread and wine, and a loggia at the top 
of the villa. Mrs. Browning found herself rapidly recover- 
ing strength, and their comfort was further extended by 
finding a hbrary in Siena, where, for three francs a month, 
they had access to the limited store of books which seem so 
luxurious in Italy. The boy Browning was delighted with 
his new surroundings, his sole infelicity being his inability 
to reach the grapes clustering over the trellises; he missed 
the Austrian band that made music (or noise) for his delec- 
tation in Florence, although to compensate for this priva- 



126 THE BROWNINGS 

tion he himself sang louder than ever. In after years Mr. 
Browning laughingly related this anecdote of his son's 
childhood: "I was one day playing a delicate piece of 
Chopin's on the piano, and hearing a loud noise outside, 
hastily stopped playing when my little boy ran in, and my 
wife exclaimed : * How could you leave off playing when 
Penini brought three drums to accompany you?' " 

For all this bloom and beauty in Siena they paid a little 
less than fifteen francs a week. Soon after their arrival 
they learned of the shipwreck in which the Marchese and 
Marchesa d'Ossoli and the little Angehno all perished, and 
the tragedy deeply impressed Mrs. Browning. "The 
work' that the Marchesa was preparing upon Italy would 
have been more equal to her faculties than anything she 
has ever produced," said Mrs. Browning, "her other writings 
being curiously inferior to the impression made by her 
conversation." 

Before returning to Florence the Brownings passed a 
week in the town of Siena to visit the pictures and churches, 
but they found it pathetic to leave the villa, and especially 
harrowing to their sensibilities to part with the pig. There 
is consolation, however, for most mortal sorrows, and 
the Brownings found it in their intense interest in Sienese 
art. The wonderful pulpit of the Duomo, the work of 
Niccola Pisano; the font of San Giovanni; the Sodomas, and 
the Libreria (the work of Pius III, which he built when he 
was Cardinal, and in which, at the end of the aisle, is a 
picture of his own elevation to the Papal throne, painted 
after his death) fascinated their attention. The Brownings 
found it dazzling to enter this interior, all gold and color, 
with the most resplendent decorative effects. They fol- 
lowed in the footsteps of Saint Catherine, as do all pil- 
grims to Siena, and climbed the hill to the Oratorio di 
Santa Caterina in Fontebranda, and read that inscription: 
"Here she stood and touched that precious vessel and gift 




'-'^Tjr^j^W^^i'i^^^^ 



«SiH-<55 







Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence, 

KNOWN as the DuOMO. 

" The most to praise and the best to see 
Was the startling bell-lower Giotto raised." 

Old Pictures in Florence. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 127 

of God, blessed Catherine, who in her life did so many 
miracles." They lingered, too, in the Cappella Santa Cate- 
rina in San Domenico, where Catherine habitually prayed, 
where she beheld visions and received her mystic revela- 
tions. They loitered in the piazza, watching the stars 
hangover that aerial tower, " II Mangia," and drove to San 
Gimignano, with its picturesque medieval atmosphere. 

It was in the autumn of 1850 that Tennyson's "In 
Memoriam," first privately and then anonymously 
printed, was acknowledged by the poet. The Brownings 
read extracts from it in the Examiner, and they were deeply 
moved by it. "Oh, there 's a poet!" wrote Mrs. Brown- 
ing. At last, "by a sort of miracle," they obtained a copy, 
and Mrs. Browning was carried away with its exquisite 
touch, its truth and earnestness. "The book has gone to 
my heart and soul," she says, "I think it full of deep pathos 
and beauty." 

An interesting visitor dropped in at Casa Guidi in the 
person of a grandson of Goethe; and his mission to Florence, 
to meet the author of "Paracelsus " and discuss with him 
the character of the poem, was a tribute to its power. Mrs. 
Browning, whose poetic ideals were so high, writing to a 
friend of their guest, rambled on into some allusions to 
poetic art, and expressed her opinion that all poets should 
take care to teach the world that poetry is a divine thing. 
"Rather perish every verse I ever wrote, for one," she said, 
" than help to drag down an inch that standard of poetry 
which, for the sake of humanity as well as literature, should 
be kept high." 

In "Aurora Leigh " she expresses the same sentiment in 
the lines: 

"I, who love my art, 
Would never wish it lower to suit my stature." 

Full of affection and interest are Mrs. Browning's letters 
to her husband's sister, Sarianna, who, with her father, is 



128 THE BROWNINGS 

now living in Hatcham, near London. In the spring of 
1852, after passing the winter in Florence, the Brownings 
set out for England; the plan at first being to go south to 
Naples, pause at Rome, and then go northward; but this 
was finally abandoned, and they proceeded directly to 
Venice, where Mrs. Browning was enchanted with life set in 
a scenic loveHness of "music and stars." 

"I have been between heaven and earth since our arrival 
in Venice," she writes. "The heaven of it is ineffable. 
Never have I touched the skirts of so celestial a place. 
The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of water 
between all that gorgeous color and carving, the enchanting 
silence, the moonhght, the music, the gondolas, — I mix it 
all up together. ..." 

In the divine beauty of Venetian evenings they sat in 
the white moonlight in the piazza of San Marco, taking 
their coffee and the French papers together. Or they would 
go to the opera, where for a ridiculously small sum they 
had an entire box to themselves. But while Mrs. Browning 
longed "to live and die in Venice, and never go away," the 
chmate did not agree with Mr. Browning, and they jour- 
neyed on toward Paris, stopping one night at Padua and 
driving out to Arqua for Petrarca's sake. In Milan Mrs. 
Browning climbed the three hundred and fifty steps, 
to the topmost pinnacle of the glorious cathedral. At Como 
they abandoned the diHgence for the boat, sailing through 
that lovely chain of lakes to Fliielen, and thence to Lucerne, 
the scenery everywhere impressing Mrs. Browning as being 
so sublime that she "felt as if standing in the presence of 
God." From Lucerne they made a detour through Ger- 
many, pausing at Strasburg, and arriving in Paris in July. 
This journey initiated an absence of almost a year and a 
half from Italy. They had let their apartment, so they 
were quite free to wander, and they were even considering 
the possibiHty of remaining permanently in Paris, whose 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 129 

brilliant intellectual life appealed to them both. After a 
brief sojourn in the French capital, they went on to Eng- 
land, and they had rather an embarrassment of riches in 
the number of houses proffered them, for Tennyson begged 
them to accept the loan of his house and servants at Twick- 
enham, and Joseph Arnould was equally urgent that they 
should occupy his town house. But they took lodgings, 
instead, locating in Devonshire Street, and London life 
proceeds to swallow them up after its own absorbing 
fashion. They breakfast with Rogers, and pass an even- 
ing with the Carlyles; Forster gives a "magnificent dinner" 
for them; Mrs. Fanny Kemble calls, and sends them 
tickets for her reading of "Hamlet"; and the Proctors, 
Mrs. Jameson, and other friends abound. They go to 
New Cross, Hatcham, to visit Mr. Browning's father and 
sister, where the Httle Penini "is taken into adoration " by 
his grandfather. Mrs. Browning's sisters show her every 
affection, and her brothers come; but her father, in reply 
to her own and her husband's letter, simply sends back to 
her, with their seals unbroken, all the letters she had written 
to him from Italy. "So there's the end," she says; "I 
cannot, of course, write again. God takes it all into His 
own hands, and I wait," The warm affection of her sisters 
cheered her, Mrs. Surtees Cook (Henrietta Barrett) coming 
up from Somersetshire for a week's visit, and her sister 
Arabel being invited with her. It was during this sojourn 
in London that Bayard Taylor, poet and critic, and after- 
ward American Minister Plenipotentiary to Germany, 
called upon the Brownings, bringing a letter of introduc- 
tion from Hillard. 

The poet's wife impressed Taylor as almost a spirit 
figure, with her pallor and slender grace, and the little 
Penini, "a blue-eyed, golden-haired boy, babbling his 
little sentences in Italian," strayed in like a sunbeam. 
While Taylor was with them, Mr. Kenyon called, and 



130 THE BROWNINGS 

after his departure Browning remarked to his guest: 
" There goes one of the most splendid men Hving, — a man 
so noble in his friendship, so lavish in his hospitality, so 
large-hearted and benevolent, that he deserves to be 
known all over the world as Kenyon the Magnificent." 

The poets were overwhelmed with London hospitalities, 
and as Mrs. Browning gave her maid, Wilson, leave of 
absence to visit her own family, the care of httle Pen fell 
upon her. He was in a state of "deplorable grief" for his 
nurse, ''and after all," laughed Mrs. Browning, "the place 
of nursery maid is more suitable to me than that of poetess 
(or even poet's wife) in this obstreperous London." 

In the late September the Brownings crossed to Paris, 
Carlyle being their travehng companion, and after an 
effort to secure an apartment near the Madeleine, they 
finally estabUshed themselves in the Avenue des Champs 
Elysees (No. 128), where they had pretty, sunny rooms, 
tastefully furnished, with the usual French lavishness in 
mirrors and clocks, — all for two hundred francs a month, 
which was hardly more than they had paid for the dreary 
Grosvenor Street lodgings in London. Mrs. Browning was 
very responsive to that indefinable exhilaration of atmos- 
phere that pervades the French capital, and the little 
Penini was charmed with the gayety and brightness. Mrs. 
Browning enjoyed the restaurant dining, a la carte, "and 
mixing up one's dinner with heaps of newspapers, and the 
'solution' by Emile de Girardin," who suggested, it 
seems, "that the next President of France should be a 
tailor." Meantime she writes to a friend that "the ' elf ' is 
flourishing in all good fairyhood, with a scarlet rose leaf on 
each cheek." They found themselves near neighbors of 
Beranger, and frequently saw him promenading the ave- 
nue in a white hat, and they learned that he lived very 
quietly and "kept out of scrapes, poetical and political." 
Mrs. Browning notes that they would like to know Beran- 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 131 

ger, were the stars propitious, and that no accredited letter 
of introduction to him would have been refused, but that 
they could not make up their minds to go to his door and 
introduce themselves as vagrant minstrels. To George 
Sand they brought a letter from Mazzini, and although they 
heard she "had taken vows against seeing strangers," Mrs. 
Browning declared she would not die, if she could help it, 
without meeting the novehst who had so captivated her. 
Mazzini's letter, with one from themselves, was sent to 
George Sand through mutual friends, and the following 
reply came: 

Madame, j'aurai I'honneur de vous recevoir Dimanche pro- 
chain, rue Racine, 3. C'est le seul jour que je puisse passer 
chez moi; et encore je n'en suis pas absolument certaine — mais 
je ferai tellement men possible, que ma bonne etoile m'y aidera 
peut-etre un peu. Agreez mille remerciments de cceur ainsi 
que Monsieur Browning, que j'espere voir avec vous, pour la 
sympathie que vous m'accordez. 

George Sand. 

Paris, 12 fevrier, 1852. 

The visit must have been mutually satisfactory, for it 
was repeated two or three times, and they found her 
simple, "without a shade of affectation or consciousness." 
Another pleasure they had was in meeting Lamartine, who 
took the initiative in asking to be allowed to call on them. 
After their arrival in Paris Carlyle passed several evenings 
with them, and Mrs. Browning felt, with her husband, 
that he was one of the most interesting of men, "highly 
picturesque " in conversation. Her sympathetic insight 
gave her always the key and the clue to character, and 
perhaps no one ever read Carlyle more truly than she, 
when she interpreted his bitterness only as melancholy, 
and his scorn as sensibility. 

The Brownings had not been long in Paris before they 
were invited to a reception at Lady Elgin's, where they met 



132 THE BROWNINGS 

Madame Mohl, who at once cordially urged their coming 
to her "evenings," to meet her French celebrities. Lady 
Elgin was domiciled in the old Faubourg Saint Germain, 
and received every Monday evening from eight to twelve, 
sans f agon, people being in morning dress, and being served 
with simple refreshment of tea and cakes. Lady Elgin ex- 
pressed the hope that the Brownings would come to her on 
every one of these evenings, Mrs. Browning said that she 
had expected "to see Balzac's duchesses and liommes de 
lettres on all sides," but she found it less notable, though 
very agreeable. The elder Browning and his daughter pay 
a visit to them, greatly to Mrs. Browning's enjoyment. At 
this time they half contemplated living permanently in 
Paris, if it seemed that Mrs. Browning could endure the cli- 
mate, and she records, during the visit of her husband's 
father and sister, that if they do remain in Paris they hope 
to induce these beloved members of the family to also es- 
tabHsh themselves there. As it turned out, the Brownings 
passed only this one winter in the French capital, but the 
next spring Mr. Browning {pere) and his daughter Sarianna 
took up their residence in Paris, where they remained 
during the remainder of his life. Mrs. Browning was always 
deeply attached to her husband's sister. "Sarianna is full 
of accomplishment and admirable sense," she wrote of her, 
and the visit of both gave her great pleasure. The coup 
d'etat took place early in December, but they felt no alarm. 
Mrs. Browning expressed her great faith in the French 
people, and declared the talk about "miUtary despotism " 
to be all nonsense. The defect she saw in M. Thiers was 
"a lack of breadjth of view, which helped to bring the situa- 
tion to a dead lock, on which the French had no choice 
than to sweep the board clean and begin again." 

It was during this early winter, with French politics and 
French society and occasional spectacles and processions 
extending from the Carrousel to the Arc de I'Etoile, that 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 133 

Browning wrote that essay on Shelley, which his publisher 
of that time, Mr. Moxon, had requested to accompany 
a series of Shelley letters which had been discovered^ 
but which were afterward found to be fraudulent. The 
edition was at once suppressed; but a few copies had 
already gone out, and, as Professor Dowden says, "The 
essay is interesting as Browning's only considerable piece 
of prose; ... for him the poet of 'Prometheus Un- 
bound ' was not that beautiful and ineffectual angel of 
Matthew Arnold's fancy, beating in the void his luminous 
wings. A great moral purpose looked forth from Shelley's 
work, as it does from all lofty works of art." It was "the 
dream of boyhood," Browning tells us, to render justice to 
SheUey; and he availed himself of this opportunity with 
alluring eagerness. His interpretation of Shelley is singu- 
larly noble and in accord with all the great spiritual teach- 
ings of his own poetic work. Browning's plea that there is 
no basis for any adequate estimate of Shelley, who "died 
before his youth was ended," cannot but commend its 
justice; and he urges that in any measurement of Shelley 
as a man he must be contemplated "at his ultimate spirit- 
ual stature " and not judged by the mistakes of ten years 
before when in his entire immaturity of character. 

How all that infinite greatness of spirit and almost divine 
breadth of comprehension that characterize Robert Brown- 
ing reveal themselves in this estimate of Shelley. It is 
seeing human errors and mistakes as God sees them, — 
the temporary faults, defects, imperfections of the soul on 
its onward way to perfection. This was the attitude of 
Browning's profoundest convictions regarding human life. 

"Eternal process moving on; 

From state to state the spirit walks. " 

This achievement of the divine ideal for man is not 
within the possibiUties of the brief sojourn on earth, 



134 THE BROWNINGS 

but what does the transition called death do for man 
but to 

"Interpose at the difficult moment, snatch Saul, the mistake, 
Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and bid him awake 
From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set 
Clear and safe in new Ught and new life, — a new harmony yet 
To be run, and continued, and ended — who knows? — or endure! 
The man taught enough by hfe's dream, of the rest to make sure." 

Browning's message in its completeness was invariably 
that which is imaged, too, in these lines from Mrs. Brown- 
ing's "Aurora Leigh ": 

"And take for a worthier stage the soul itself, 
Its shifting fancies and celestial lights." 

For it is only in this drama of the infinite life that the 
spiritual man can be tested. It was from the standpoint 
of an actor on this celestial stage that Browning considered 
Shelley. In the entire range of Browning's art the spiritual 
man is imaged as a complex and individualized spark of 
the divine force. He is seen for a flitting moment on his 
way toward a divine destiny. 

Professor Hall Griffin states as his belief that Browning's 
paper was to some degree inspired by that of Joseph Mil- 
sand on himself, which appeared in August, 1851, in the 
Revue des Deux Mondes in which Milsand commended 
Browning's work "as pervaded by an intense behef in the 
importance of the individual soul." 

To Browning this winter was enchanted by the initiation 
of his friendship with Milsand, the distinguished French 
scholar and critic, who had already made a name as a 
philosophic thinker and had published a book on Ruskin 
(VEsthetique Anglaise), and who was a discerner of 
spirits in poetic art as well. About the time that "Para- 
celsus " appeared, Milsand had seen an extract from the 
poem that captivated him, and he at once sent for the 



i 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 135 

volume. He had also read , with the deepest interest, B ro wn- 
ing's ''Christmas Eve and Easter Day." He was contrib- 
uting to the Revue des Deux Mondes two papers on 
La Poesie Anglaise depuis Byron, the first of which, on 
Tennyson, had appeared the previous August. Milsand 
was about completing the second paper of this series (on 
Browning), and it happened just at this time that Miss 
Mitford's "Recollections of a Literary Life" was pub- 
lished, in which, writing of the Brownings, she had told 
the story of that tragic death of Mrs. Browning's brother 
Edward, who had been drowned at Torquay. In these 
days, when, as Emerson rhymes the fact, 

"Every thought is public, 
Every nook is wide, 
The gossips spread each whisper 
And the gods from side to side," 

it is a little difiicult to quite comprehend, even in compre- 
hending Mrs. Browning's intense sensitiveness and the 
infinite sacredness of this grief, why she should have been 
so grieved at Miss Mitford's tender allusion to an accident 
that was, by its very nature, pubHc, and which must have 
been reported in the newspapers of the day. Mrs. Brown- 
ing was always singularly free from any morbid states, from 
any tendency to the idee fixe, to which a semi-invalid con- 
dition is peculiarly and pardonably liable; but she said, in 
an affectionate letter to Miss Mitford: 

" I have lived heart to heart (for instance) with my husband 
these five years : I have never yet spoken out, in a whisper even, 
what is in me; never yet could find heart or breath; never yet 
could bear to hear a word of reference from his lips." 

It is said there are no secrets in heaven, and in that re- 
spect, at least, the twentieth century is not unlike the celes- 
tial state; and it is almost as hard a task for the imagina- 
tion to comprehend the reserve in all personal matters that 



136 THE BROWNINGS 

characterized the mid-nineteenth century as it would be to 
enter into absolute comprehension of the medieval mind; 
but Mrs. Browning's own pathetic deprecation of her feel- 
ings regarding this is its own passport to the sympathy of 
the reader. To Miss Mitford's reply, full of sympathetic 
comprehension and regret, Mrs. Browning replied that she 
understood, "and I thank you," she added, "and love you, 
which is better. Now, let us talk of reasonable things." 
For Mrs. Browning had that rare gift and grace of instantly 
closing the chapter, and turning the page, and ceasing from 
all allusion to any subject of regret, after the inevitable 
reference of the moment had been made. She had the 
mental energy and the moral buoyancy to drop the matter, 
and this characteristic reveals how normal she was, and 
how far from any morbidness. 

Milsand, with a delicacy that Robert Browning never 
forgot, came to him to ask his counsel regarding the in- 
clusion of this tragic accident that had left such traces on 
his wife's genius and character (traces that are revealed 
in immortal expression in her poem, "De Profundis," writ- 
ten some years later), and Browning was profoundly touched 
by his consideration. Grasping both Milsand's hands; he 
exclaimed, "Only a Frenchman could have done this!" 
A friendship initiated under circumstances so unusual, and 
with such reverent intuition of Mrs. Browning's feelings, 
could not but hold its place apart to them both. 

The Brownings found Paris almost as ineffable in beauty 
in the early spring as was their Florence. "It's rather 
dangerous to let the charm of Paris work," laughed Mrs. 
Browning; "the honey will be clogging our feet soon, and 
we shall find it difficult to go away." 

They had a delightful winter socially, as well; they went 
to Ary Scheffer's and heard Madame Viardot, then in the 
height of her artistic fame; George Sand sent them tickets 
for the premiere of " Les Vacances de Pandolphe"; they 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 137 

went to the Vaudeville to see the "Dame aux Camellias," 
of which Mrs. Browning said that she did not agree with 
the common cry about its immorality. To her it was both 
moral and human, "but I never will go to see it again," 
she says, "for it almost broke my heart. The exquisite 
acting, the too literal truth to nature . . ." They met 
Paul de Musset, but missed his brother Alfred that 
winter, whose poems they both cared for. 

The elder Browning retained through his life that sin- 
gular talent for caricature drawing that had amused and 
fascinated his son in the poet's childhood; and during his 
visit to the Brownings in Paris he had produced many of 
these drawings which became the dehght of his grand- 
son as well. The Paris streets furnished him with some 
inimitable suggestions, and Robert Barrett Browning, to 
this day, preserves many of these keen and humorous and 
extremely clever drawings of his grandfather. Thierry, 
the historian, who was suffering from blindness, sent to 
the Brownings a request that they would call on him, with 
which they immediately complied, and they were much 
interested in his views on France. The one disappointment 
of that season was in not meeting Victor Hugo, whose 
fiery hostility to the new regime caused it to be more ex- 
pedient for him to reside quite beyond possible sight of the 
gilded dome of the InvaHdes. 

In June the Brownings returned to London, where they 
domiciled themselves in Welbeck Street (No. 58), Mrs. 
Browning's sisters both being near, Mrs. Surtees Cook 
having established herself only twenty doors away, and 
Miss Arabel Barrett being in close proximity in Wimpole 
Street. They were invited to Kenyon's house at Wimble- 
don, where Landor was a guest, whom Mrs. Browning 
found "looking as young as ever, and full of passionate 
energy," and who talked with characteristic exaggeration 
of Louis Napoleon and of the President of the French 



138 THE BROWNINGS 

nation. Landor "detested " the one and "loathed " the 
other; and as he did not accept Talleyrand's ideal of the 
use of language, he by no means concealed these sentiments. 
Mazzini immediately sought the Brownings, his "pale, 
spiritual face " shining, and his "intense eyes full of mel- 
ancholy illusions." He brought Mrs. Carlyle with him, 
Mrs. Browning finding her "full of thought, and feeling, 
and character." Miss Mulock, who had then written 
*'The Ogilvies," and had also read her title clear to some 
poetic recognition, was in evidence that season, as were 
Mr. and Mrs. Monckton Milnes, and Fanny Kemble 
was also a brilliant figure in the social life. Nor was the 
London of that day apparently without a taste for the 
sorceress and the soothsayer, for no less a personage than 
Lord Stanhope was, it seems, showing to the elect the 
"spirits of the sun " in a crystal ball, which Lady Blessing- 
ton had bought from an Egyptian magician and had sold 
again. Lady Blessington declared she had no understand- 
ing of the use of it, but it was on record that the initiated 
could therein behold Oremus, Spirit of the Sun. Both the 
crystal ball and the seers were immensely sought, notwith- 
standing the indignation expressed by Mr. Chorley, who 
regarded the combination of social festivities and crystal 
gazing as eminently scandalous. Which element he con- 
sidered the more dangerous is not on the palimpsest that 
records the story of these days. Lord Stanhope invited the 
Brownings to these occult occasions of intermingled at- 
tractions, and Mrs. Browning writes: "For my part, I 
endured both luncheon and spiritual phenomena with 
great equanimity." An optician of London took advan- 
tage of the popular demand and offered a fine assortment 
of crystal ball spheres, at prices which quite restricted their 
sale to the possessors of comfortable rent-rolls, and Lord 
Stanhope asserted that a great number of persons resorted 
to these balls to divine the future, without the courage to 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 139 

confess it. One wonders as to whom "the American 
Corinna, in yellow silk," in London, that season, could have 
been? 

The Brownings were invited to a country house in Farn- 
ham, to meet Charles Kingsley, who impressed them with 
his genial and tender kindness, and while they thought some 
of his social views wild and theoretical, they loved his ear- 
nestness and originality, and beheved he could not be 
"otherwise than good and noble." It was during this sum- 
mer (according to WilHam Michael Rossetti) that Browning 
and Dante Gabriel Rossetti first met, Rossetti coming to 
call on them in company with William Allingham. On 
August 30, from Chapel House, Twickenham, Tennyson 
wrote to Mrs. Browning of the birth of his son, Hallam, 
to which she repHed: 

"Thank you and congratulate you from my heart. May God 
bless you all three. . . . Will you say to dear Mrs. Tennyson 
how deeply I sympathize in her happiness. ..." 

To this letter Browning added a postscript saying: 

"How happy I am in your happiness, and in the assurance 
that it is greater than even you can quite know yet. God bless, 
dear Tennyson, you and all yours." 

Tennyson wrote again to Mrs. Browning, saying, 
". . . How very grateful your little note and Browning's 
epilogue made me." And he signs himself "Ever yours and 
your husband's." There was a brilliant christening 
luncheon at the home of Monckton Milnes, "and his baby," 
notes Mrs. Browning, "was made to sweep, in India muslin 
and Brussels lace, among a very large circle of admiring 
guests." The Brownings were especially invited to bring 
their Httle Penini with them, "and he behaved like an 
angel, everybody said," continued his mother, "and looked 
very pretty, I said myself; only he disgraced us all at 



I40 THE BROWNINGS 

last by refusing to kiss the baby on the ground of its being 
* troppo grandeJ" 

To Mrs. Tennyson's note of invitation to the Brownings 
to attend the christening of their child, Mrs. Browning 
replied that they had planned to leave England before that 
date; "but you offer us an irresistible motive for staying, 
in spite of fogs and cold," she continued, "and we would 
not miss the christening for the world " At the last, how- 
ever, Mrs. Browning was unable to go, so that the poet 
went alone. After the little ceremony Browning took the- 
boy in his arms and tossed him, while Tennyson, looking 
on, exclaimed: "Ah, that is as good as a glass of cham- 
pagne for him." 

Florence Nightingale was a not infrequent visitor of the 
Brownings that summer, and she always followed her calls 
by a gift of masses of flowers. While "Morte d' Arthur" 
had been written more than ten years previously, Tennyson 
was now evolving the entire plan of the "Idylls of the 
King." Coventry Patmore, who brought the manuscript 
copy of his own poems, published later, for Mr. Browning 
to read, mentioned to the poets that Tennyson was writing 
a collection of poems on Arthur, which were to be united 
by their subject, after the manner of "In Memoriam," 
which project interested Mrs. Browning greatly. "The 
work will be full of beauty, I don't doubt," she said. 

Ruskin invited the Brownings to Denmark Hill to see his 
Turners, and they found the pictures "divine." They Hked 
Ruskin very much, finding him "gentle, yet earnest." 

During this London sojourn Mr. Browning's old friend, 
William Johnson Fox, who had first encouraged the young 
poet by praising "not a little, which praise comforted me 
not a little," the verses of his "Incondita"; who had written 
a favorable review of "Pauline"; who had found a pubhsher 
for "Paracelsus," and had introduced the poet to Macready, 
again appears, and writes to his daughter that he has had 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 141 

"a chamiing hour " with the Brownings, and that he is 
more fascinated than ever with Mrs. Browning. "She 
talked lots of George Sand, and so beautifully, and she silver- 
electroplated Louis Napoleon!" Mr. Fox adds:^ "They 
came in to their lodgings late at night, and R. B. says that 
in the morning twihght he saw three pictures on the bed- 
room wall, and speculated as to whom they might be. 
Light gradually showed the first to be Beatrice Cenci. 
* Good,' said he; * in a poetic region.' More light; the 
second, Lord Byron! Who can the third be? And what 
think you it was? Your (Fox's) sketch (engraved chalk 
portrait) of me? ' He made quite a poem and picture of 
the affair. She seems much better; and the young Floren- 
tine was gracious." 

In November the Brownings again left London for Flor- 
ence, pausing a week in Paris on the way, where they wit- 
nessed the picturesque pomp of the reception of Louis 
Napoleon, the day being brilliant with sunshine, and the 
hero of the hour producing an impression by riding en- 
tirely alone, with at least ten paces between himself and 
the nearest of his escort, till even Charlotte Cushman, sit- 
ting at the side of Mrs. Browning, watching the spectacle, 
declared this to be "fine." The "young Florentine " was 
in a state of ecstasy, which he expressed in mingled French 
and Italian. 

They journeyed to Florence by the Mont Cenis, stopping 
a week in Genoa, where Mrs. Browning lay ill on her sofa; 
but the warmth of the Italian sunshine soon restored her, 
and for two days before they left, she was able to walk all 
about the beautiful old city. They visited together the 
Andrea Doria palace, and enjoyed sauntering in a sunshine 
that was like that of June days dropped into the heart 

* Robert Browning: Life and Letters. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and 
Company. 



142 THE BROWNINGS 

of November. They were delighted to hear the sound of 
their "dear ItaKan " again, and proceeded by diligence 
to Florence, where they took possession of their Casa 
Guidi home, which looked, wrote Mrs. Browning to her 
sister-in-law, as if they had only left it yesterday. The 
little Penini was "in a state of complete agitation " on 
entering Florence, through having heard so much talk of 
it, and expressed his emotion by repeated caresses and em- 
braces. Mrs. Browning shared the same amazement at the 
contrast of climate between Turin and Genoa that twen- 
tienth-century travelers experience; Turin having been so 
cold that they were even obliged to have a fire all night, 
while at Genoa they were "gasping for breath, with all the 
windows and doors open, blue skies burning overhead, and 
no air stirring." But this very heat was Hfe-giving to Mrs. 
Browning as they lingered on the terraces, gazing on the 
beautiful bay encircled by its sweep of old marble palaces. 
She even climbed half-way up the lighthouse for the view, 
resting there while Browning climbed to the top, for that 
incomparable outlook which every visitor endeavors to 
enjoy. In Florence there were the "divine sunsets " over 
the Arno, and Penini's Italian nurse rushing in to greet the 
child, exclaiming, "Z>^o mio, come e hellino! " They " caught 
up their ancient traditions " just where they left them, 
Mrs. Browning observes, though Mr. Browning, "demoral- 
ized by the boulevards," missed the stir and intensity of 
Parisian life. They found Powers, the sculptor, changing 
his location, and Mr. Lytton (the future Earl), who was an 
attache at the English Embassy, became a frequent and a 
welcome visitor. In a letter to Mr. Kenyon Mrs. Brown- 
ing mentions that Mr. Lytton is interested in manifestations 
of spiritualism, and had informed her that, to his father's 
great satisfaction (his father being Sir E. Bulwer Lytton), 
these manifestations had occurred at Knebworth, the 
Lytton home in England. Tennyson's brother, who had 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 



143 



married an Italian lady, was in Florence, and the American 
Minister, Mr. Marsh. With young Lytton at this time, 
Poetry was an article of faith, and nothing would have 
seemed to him more improbable, even had any of his clair- 
voyants foretold it, than his future splendid career as Vice- 
roy of India. 

Mrs. Browning was reading Prudhon that winter, and 
also Swedenborg, Lamartine, and other of the French 
writers. Browning was writing from time to time many of 
the lyrics that appear in the Collection entitled *'Men and 
Women," while on Mrs. Browning had already dawned the 
plan of "Aurora Leigh." They read the novel of Dumas, 
Diane de Lys, Browning's verdict on it being that it was 
clever, but outrageous as to the morals; and Mrs. Browning 
rejoiced greatly in Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle 
Tom's Cabin," saying of Mrs. Stowe, "No woman ever 
had such a success, such a fame." All in all, this winter of 
1 85 2-1 853 was a very happy one to the poets, what with 
their work, their friends, playing with the little Wiedemann 
(Penini), the names seeming interchangeably used, and 
their reading, which included everything from poetry and 
romance to German mysticism, social economics, and 
French criticism. Mrs. Browning found one of the best 
apologies for Louis Napoleon in Lamartine's work on the 
Revolution of '48; and she read, with equal interest, that 
of Louis Blanc on the same period. In April "Colombe's 
Birthday " was produced at the Haymarket Theater in 
London, the role of the heroine being taken by Miss Helen 
Faucit, afterward Lady Martin. The author had no finan- 
cial interest in this production, which ran for two weeks, and 
was spoken of by London critics as holding the house in 
fascinated attention, with other appreciative phrases. 

Mrs. Browning watches the drama of Italian politics, and 
while she regarded Mazzini as noble, she also felt him to be 
unwise, a verdict that time has since justified. "We see 



144 THE BROWNINGS 

a great deal of Frederick Tennyson," she writes; "Robert 
is very fond of him, and so am I. He too writes poems, and 
prints them, though not for the pubUc." Their mutual 
love of music was a strong bond between Browning and 
Mr. Tennyson, who had a villa on the Fiesolean slope, with 
a large hall in which he was reported to "sit in the midst of 
his forty fiddlers." 

For the coming summer they had planned a retreat into 
Giotto's country, the Casentino, but they finally decided on 
Bagni di Lucca again, where they remained from July till 
October, Mr. Browning writing "In a Balcony" during 
this villeggiatura. Before leaving Florence they enjoyed an 
idyllic day at Pratolina with Mrs. Kinney, the wife of the 
American Minister to the Court of Turin, and the mother 
of Edmund Clarence Stedman. The royal residences of 
the old Dukes of Tuscany were numerous, but among them 
all, that at Pratolina, so associated with Francesco Primo 
and Bianca Capella, is perhaps the most interesting, and 
here Mrs. Kinney drove her guests, where they picnicked 
on a hillside which their hostess called the Mount of Vision 
because Mrs. Browning stood on it; Mr. Browning spoke 
of the genius of his wife, "losing himself in her glory," said 
Mrs. Kinney afterward, while Mrs. Browning lay on the 
grass and slept. The American Minister and Mrs. Kinney 
were favorite guests in Casa Guidi, where they passed with 
the Brownings the last evening before the poets set out for 
their summer retreat. Mrs. Browning delighted in Mr. 
Kinney's views of Italy, and his belief in its progress and 
its comprehension of liberty. The youthful Florentine, 
Penini, was delighted at the thought of the change, and his 
devotion to his mother was instanced one night when 
Browning playfully refused to give his wife a letter, and 
Pen, taking the byplay seriously, fairly smothered her in 
his clinging embrace, exclaiming, "Nevermind, mine dar- 
ling Ba!" He had caught up his mother's pet name, "Ba," 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 145 

and often used it. It was this name to which she refers in 
the poem beginning, 

"I have a name, a little name, 
Uncadenced for the ear. " 

Beside the PratoHna excursion, Mr. Lytton gave a little 
reception for them before the Florentine circle dissolved for 
the summer, asking a few friends to meet the Brownings at 
his villa on Bellosguardo, where they all sat out on the 
terrace, and Mrs. Browning made the tea, and they feasted 
on nectar and ambrosia in the guise of cream and straw- 
berries. 

"Such a view!" said Mrs. Browning of that evening. 
"Florence dissolving in the purple of the hills, and the stars 
looking on." Mrs. Browning's love for Florence grew 
stronger with every year. That it was her son's native 
city was to her a deeply significant fact, for playfully as 
they called him the "young Florentine," there was behind 
the Hght jest a profound recognition of the child's claim 
to his native country. Still, with all this response to the 
enchantment of Florence, they were planning to live in 
Paris, after another winter (which they wished to pass in 
Rome), as the elder Browning and his daughter Sarianna 
were now to live in the French capital, and Robert Brown- 
ing was enamored of the brilliant, abounding life, and the 
art, and splendor of privilege, and opportunity in Paris. 
"I think it too probable that I may not be able to bear two 
successive winters in the North," said Mrs. Browning, "but 
in that case it will be easy to take a flight for a few winter 
months into Italy, and we shall regard Paris, where Robert's 
father and sister are waiting for us, as our fixed place of 
residence." This plan, however, was never carried out, as 
Italy came to lay over them a still deeper spell, which it 
was imposssible to break. Mr. Lytton, with whom Mrs. 
Browning talked of all these plans and dreams that 



146 THE BROWNINGS 

evening on his terrace, had just privately printed his drama, 
*'Clytemnestra," which Mrs, Browning found "full of 
promise," although "too ambitious " because after ^schy- 
lus. But this young poet, afterward to be so widely known 
in the realm of poetry as "Owen Meredith," and as Lord 
Lytton in the realm of diplomacy and statesmanship, 
impressed her at the time as possessing an incontestable 
"faculty" in poetry, that made her expect a great deal 
from him in the future. She invited him to visit them in 
their sylvan retreat that summer at Bagni di Lucca, an 
invitation that he joyously accepted. Some great savant, 
who was "strong in veritable Chinese," found his way to 
Casa Guidi, as most of the wandering minstrels of the time 
did, and "nearly assassinated " the mistress of the menage 
with an interminable analysis of a Japanese novel. Mr. 
Lytton, who was present, declared she grew paler and paler 
every moment, which she afterward asserted was not be- 
cause of sympathy with the heroine of this complex tale! 
But this formidable scholar had a passport to Mrs. Brown- 
ing's consideration by bringing her a little black profile of 
her beloved Isa, which gave " the air of her head," and then, 
said Mrs. Browning, laughingly, "how could I complain of 
a man who rather flattered me than otherwise, and com- 
pared me to Isaiah? " 

But at last, after the middle of July, what with poets, and 
sunsets from terraces, and savants, and stars, they really 
left their Florence "dissolving in her purple hills " behind 
them, and bestowed themselves in Casa Tolomei, at the 
Baths, where a row of plane trees stood before the door, in 
which the cicale sang all day, and solemn, mysterious moun- 
tains kept watch all day and night. There was a garden, 
lighted by the fireflies at night, and Penini mistook the 
place for Eden. His happiness overflowed in his prayers, 
and he thriftily united the petition that God would "mate 
him dood" with the supplication that God would also "tate 




Casa Guidi 

"/ heard last night a little child go singing 
'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church." 

Casa Guidi Windows. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 147 

him on a dontey," thus uniting all possible spiritual and 
temporal aspirations. The little fellow was wild with 
happiness in this enchanted glade, where the poets were 
"safe among mountains, shut in with a row of seven plane- 
trees joined at top." Mr. Browning was still working on 
his lyrics, of which his wife had seen very few. "We neither 
of us show our work to the other till it is finished," she 
said. She recognized that an artist must work in solitude 
until the actual result is achieved. 

It seems that Mr. Chorley in London had fallen into de- 
pressed spirits that summer, indulging in the melancholy 
meditations that none of his friends loved him, beyond 
seeing in him a "creature to be eaten," and that, having 
furnished them with a banquet, their attentions to him 
were over (a most regrettable state of mind, one may 
observe, en passant, and one of those spiritual pitfalls which 
not only Mr. Chorley in particular, but all of us in general 
would do particularly well to avoid). The letter that Mrs. 
Browning wrote to him wonderfully reveals her all-compre- 
hending sympathy and her spiritual buoyancy and intel- 
lectual poise. "You are very wrong," she says to him, " and 
I am very right to upbraid you. I take the pen from Robert 

— he would take it if I did not. We scramble a little for 
the pen which is to tell you this, and be dull in the reitera- 
tion, rather than not to instruct you properly. ... I quite 
understand how a whole life may seem rumpled and creased 

— torn for the moment ; only you will live it smooth again, 
dear Mr. Chorley, take courage. You have time and 
strength and good aims; and human beings have been 
happy with much less. ... I think we belied ourselves to 
you in England. If you knew how, at that time, Robert 
was vexed and worn ! why, he was not the same, even to me ! 
... But then and now believe that he loved and loves 
you. Set him down as a friend, as somebody to rest on, 
after all; and don't fancy that because we are away here 



148 THE BROWNINGS 

in the wilderness (which blossoms as the rose, to one of us, 
at least) we may not be full of affectionate thoughts and 
feelings toward you in your different sort of life in London." 
The lovely spirit goes on to remind Mr. Chorley that they 
have a spare bedroom "which opens of itself at the thought 
of you," and that if he can trust himself so far from 
home, she begs him to try it for their sakes. "Come and 
look in our faces, and learn us more by heart, and see 
whether we are not two friends?" 

Surely, that Ufe was rich, whatever else it might be de- 
nied, that had Elizabeth Browning for a friend. Her genius 
for friendship was not less marvelous, nor less to be con- 
sidered, than her genius as a poet. Indeed, truly speaking, 
the one, in its ideal fullness and completeness, comprehends 
the other. 

The summer days among the beautiful hills, and by the 
green, rushing river, were made aboundingly happy to the 
Brownings by the presence of their friends, the Storys, 
who shared these vast soHtudes. The Storys had a villa 
perched on the top of the hill, just above the Brownings', the 
terrace shaded with vines, and the great mountains towering 
all around them, while a swift mountain brook swept by 
under an arched bridge, its force turning picturesque mills 
far down the valley. Under the shadow of the chestnut 
trees fringing its banks, Shelley had once pushed his boat. 
"Of society," wrote Story to Lowell, "there is none we 
care to meet but the Brownings, and with them we have 
constant and delightful intercourse, interchanging long 
evenings, two or three times a week, and driving and walk- 
ing whenever we meet. They are so simple, unaffected, and 
sympathetic. Both are busily engaged in writing, he on a 
volume of lyrics, and she on a tale or novel in verse." 

This " tale " must have been "Aurora Leigh." The wives 
of the poet and the sculptor held hilarious intercourse while 
going back and forth between each other's houses on 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 149 

donkey-back, with an enjoyment hardly eclipsed by that 
of Penini himself, whose prayer that God would let him ride 
on "dontey-back " was so aboundingly granted that the 
child might well believe in the lavishness of divine mercies. 
Browning and Story walked beside and obediently held the 
reins of their wives' steeds, that no mishap might occur. 
How the picture of these Arcadian days, in those vast leafy 
soHtudes, peopled only by gods and muses, the attendant 
"elementals" of these choice spirits, flashes out through 
more than the half century that has passed since those 
days of their joyous intercourse. There was a night when 
Story went alone to take tea with the Brownings, staying 
till nearly midnight, and Browning accompanied him home 
in the mystic moonhght. Mrs. Browning, who apparently 
shared her little son's predilections for the donkey as a 
means of transportation, would go for a morning ride, 
Browning walking beside her as slowly as possible, to keep 
pace with the donkey's degree of speed. 

Into this Arcady came, by some untraced dispensation 
of the gods, a French master of recitations, who had taught 
Rachel, and had otherwise allied himself with the great. 
M. Alexandre brought his welcome with him, in his delight- 
ful recitations from the poets. Mr. Lytton, having 
accepted Mrs. Browning's invitation given to him on his 
Bellosguardo terrace, now appeared; and the Storys and 
the Brownings organized a festa, in true Italian spirit, in 
an excursion they should all make to Prato Fiortito. 

Prato Fiortito is six miles from Bagni di Lucca, perpen- 
dicularly up and down, ''but such a vision of divine scen- 
ery," said Mrs. Browning. High among the mountains, 
Bagni di Lucca is yet surrounded by higher peaks of the 
Apennines. The journey to Prato Fiortito is like going up 
and down a wall, the only path for the donkeys being in the 
beds of the torrents that cut their way down in the spring. 

Here, after "glorious climbing," in which Mrs. Brown- 



I50 THE BROWNINGS 

ing distinguished herself no less than the others, they ar- 
rived at the Uttle old church, set amid majestic limestone 
mountains and embowered in purple shade. Here they 
feasted, Penini overcome with delight, and on shawls 
spread under the great chestnut trees Mrs. Browning and 
Mrs. Story were made luxuriously comfortable, while they 
all talked and read, M. Alexandre reciting from the French 
dramatists, and Lytton reading from his "Clytemnestra." 
The luncheon was adorned by a mass of wild strawberries, 
picked on the spot, by Browning, Story, Lytton, and 
Alexandre, while the ladies co-operated in the industry at 
this honestly earned feast by assisting to hull the berries. 
The bottle of cream and package of sugar tucked away in 
the picnic basket added all that heart could desire to this 
ambrosial luncheon. Mrs. Story, whom Mrs. Browning 
described as "a sympathetic, graceful woman, fresh and 
innocent in face and thought," was a most agreeable com- 
panion; and she and Mrs. Browning frequently exchanged 
feminine gossip over basins of strawberries and milk in each 
other's houses, for strawberries abounded in these hills. 
"If a tree is felled in the forests," said Mrs. Browning, 
" strawberries spring up just as mushrooms might, and the 
peasants sell them for just nothing," 

One night when the Brownings were having tea with the 
Storys, the talk turned on Hawthorne. Story, of course, 
knew the great romancer, whom the Brownings had not 
then met and about whom they were curious. "Haw- 
thorne is a man who talks with a pen," said Story; "he 
does not open socially to his intimate friends any more 
than he does to strangers. It is n't his way to converse." 
Mrs. Browning had then just been reading the "Blithedale 
Romance," in which she had sought unavailingly, it seems, 
for some more personal clue to the inner life of its author. 

On a brilHant August day the Brownings and the Storys 
fared forth on a grand excursion on donkey-back, to 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 151 

Benabbia, a hilltown, perched on one of the peaks. Above 
it on the rocks is a colossal cross, traced by some thunder- 
bolt of the gods, cut in the solid stone. From this excursion 
they all returned after dark, in terror of their lives lest the 
donkeys slip down the sheer precipices; but the scenery 
was "exquisite, past all beauty." Mrs. Browning was 
spell-bound with its marvelous sublimity, as they looked 
around " on the world of innumerable mountains bound 
faintly with the gray sea, and not a human habitation." 

Mrs. Browning was then reading the poems of Coventry 
Patmore, just published, of which Browning had read the 
manuscript in London in the previous year. The poems 
of Alexander Smith had also appeared at this time, and in 
him Mrs. Browning found *'an opulence of imagery," but 
a defect as to the intellectual part of poetry. With her 
characteristic tolerance, she instanced his youth in plea of 
this defect, and said that his images were "flowers thrown 
to him by the gods, gods beautiful and fragrant, but hav- 
ing no root either in Etna or Olympus." Enamored, as ever, 
of novels, she was also reading " Vilette," which she thought 
a strong story, though lacking charm, and Mrs. Gaskell's 
"Ruth," which pleased her greatly. 

With no dread of death, Mrs. Browning had a horror of 
the "rust of age," the touch of age ''which is the thick- 
ening of the mortal mask between souls. Why talk of 
age," she would say, "when we are all young in soul and 
heart? ... Be sure that it's highly moral to be young as 
long as possible. Women who dress ' suitably to their years ' 
(that is, as hideously as possible) are a disgrace to their 
sex, aren't they now?" she would laughingly declare. 

This summer in the Apennines at Bagni di Lucca had 
been a fruitful one to Browning in his poetic work. It be- 
came one of constant development, and, as Edmund Gosse 
points out, "of clarification and increasing selection." 
He had already written many of his finest lyrics, "Any 



152 THE BROWNINGS 

Wife to Any Husband," "The Guardian Angel," and 
''Saul"; and in these and succeeding months he produced 
that miracle of beauty, the poem called "The Flight of 
the Duchess"; and "A Grammarian's Funeral," "The 
Statue and the Bust," "Childe Roland to the Dark 
Tower Came," "Fra Lippo Lippi," and "Andrea del 
Sarto." To Milsand, Browning wrote that he was at work 
on lyrics "with more music and painting than before." 

The idyllic summer among the grand chestnut trees 
came to an end, as summers always do, and October found 
the Brownings again in Casa Guidi, though preparing to 
pass the winter in Rome. Verdi had just completed his 
opera of "Trovatore," which was performed at the Pergola 
in Florence, and the poets found it "very passionate and 
dramatic." 

In November they fared forth for Rome, "an exquisite 
Journey of eight days," chronicled Mrs. Browning, "see- 
ing the great monastery and triple church of Assisi, and 
that wonderful passion of waters at Terni." 

It was the picturesque Rome of the popes that still re- 
mained in that winter, and the Eternal City was aglow 
with splendid festivals and processions and with artistic 
interest. The Brownings caught something of its spirit, 
even as they came within view of the colossal dome of St. 
Peter's, and they entered the city in the highest spirits, 
"Robert and Penini singing," related Mrs. Browning, "act- 
ually, for the child was radiant and flushed with the con- 
tinual change of air and scene." The Storys had engaged 
an apartment for them, and they found "lighted fires and 
lamps," and all comfort. 

That winter of 1853-1854 still stands out in the Roman 
panorama as one of exceptional brilliancy. There was a 
galaxy of artists, — Story, who had already won fame on 
two continents; William Page, who believed he had dis- 
covered the secret of Titian's coloring; Crawford, and 




X-S 



B~ 



E o 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 153 

"young Leighton," as Mrs. Browning called the future 
president of the Royal Academy; Gibson, and his brilliant 
pupil, Harriet Hosmer; Fisher, who painted a portrait of 
Browning, and also of Penini, for his own use to exhibit in 
London. It was during this winter that Miss Hosmer took 
the cast of the ''Clasped Hands " of the Brownings, which 
was put into bronze, and which must always remain a 
work of the most tender interest. Mrs. Browning was very 
fond of "Hatty," as she called her, and in a letter to her 
Isa she described a pretty scene when Lady Marian Alford, 
the daughter of the Duke of Northampton, knelt before 
the girl sculptor and placed on her finger a ring of dia- 
monds surrounding a ruby. Browning's early friend, M. 
de Ripert-Monclar, to whom he had dedicated his "Para- 
celsus," and Lockhart, were also in Rome; and Leighton 
was completing his great canvas of Cimabue's Madonna 
carried in procession through the streets of Florence. 

The Brownings were domiciled in the Bocca di Leone, 
while the Storys were in the Piazza di Spagna; Thackeray 
and his two daughters were close at hand, in and out at the 
Brownings', with his "talk of glittering dust swept out of 
salons." There were Hans Christian Andersen, and Fanny 
Kemble, with her sister, Mrs. Sartoris, and Lady Oswald, 
a sister of Lord Elgin. Thackeray's daughter, Miss Anne 
Thackeray (now Lady Ritchie), still finds vivid her girlish 
memory of Mrs. Browning, — "a slight figure in a thin 
black gown and the unpretentious implements of her 
magic," by her sofa, on a little table. Lady Ritchie turns 
back to her diary of that winter to find in it another of her 
early impressions of Mrs. Browning, "in soft, falling 
flounces of black silk, with her heavy curls drooping, and a 
thin gold chain around her neck." This chain held a tiny 
locket of crystal set in coils of gold, which she had worn 
from childhood, not at all as an ornament, but as a Httle 
souvenir. On her death Mr. Browning put into it some 



154 THE BROWNINGS 

of her hair, and gave the treasured relic to Kate Field', 
from whom it came later into the possession of the writer 
of this book. Lady Ritchie recalls one memorable evening 
that season in the salon of Mrs. Sartoris, when the guests 
assembled in the lofty Roman drawing-room, full of 
"flowers and light, of comfort and color." She recalls how 
the swinging lamps were lighted, shedding a soft glow; 
how the grand piano stood open, and there was music, and 
"tables piled with books," and flowers everywhere. The 
hostess was in a pearl satin gown with flowing train, and 
sat by a round table reading aloud from poems of Mr. 
Browning, when the poet himself was announced, "and as 
she read, in her wonderful muse-like way, he walked in." 
All the lively company were half laughing and half protest- 
ing, and Mrs. Kemble, with her regal air, called him to 
her side, to submit to him some disputed point, which 
he evaded. Mrs. Sartoris had a story, with which she 
amused her guests, of a luncheon with the Brownings, 
somewhere in Italy, where, when she rose to go, and re- 
marked how delightful it had been, and the other guests 
joined in their expressions of enjoyment, Mr. Browning 
impulsively exclaimed : " Come back and sup with us, do ! " 
And Mrs. Browning, with the dismay of the housewife, 
cried: "Oh, Robert, there is no supper, nothing but the 
remains of the pie." To which the poet rejoined: "Then 
come back and finish the pie." 

Mrs. Browning was deeply attached to Fanny Kemble. 
She describes her, at this time, as "looking magnificent, 
with her black hair and radiant smile. A very noble crea- 
ture, indeed," added Mrs. Browning; "somewhat un- 
elastic, attached to the old modes of thought and conven- 
tion, but noble in qualities and defects. . . . Mrs. Sartoris 
is genial and generous . . . and her house has the best 
society in Rome, and exquisite music, of course." 

Mrs. Browning often joined her husband in excursions to 



r 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 155 

galleries, villas, and ruins; and when in the Sistine Chapel, 
on a memorable festival, they heard "the wrong Miserere," 
she yet found it "very fine, right or wrong, and overcoming 
in its pathos." M. Goltz, the Austrian Minister, was an 
acquaintance whom the Brownings found "witty and 
agreeable," and Mrs. Browning called the city " a palimp- 
sest Rome," with its records written all over the antique. 

The sorrow of the Storys over the death of a little son 
shadowed Mrs. Browning, and she feared for her own 
Penini, but as the winter went on she joyfully wrote of 
him that he "had not dropped a single rose-leaf from his 
cheeks," and with her sweet tenderness of motherly love 
she adds that he is "a poetical child, really, and in the best 
sense. He is full of sweetness and vivacity together, of 
imagination and grace," and she pictures his "blue, far- 
reaching eyes, and the innocent face framed in golden 
ringlets." Mrs. Kemble came to them two or three times 
a week, and they had long talks, "we three together," 
records Mrs. Browning. Mr. Page occupied the apartment 
just over that of the Brownings, and they saw much of him. 
"His portrait of Miss Cushman is a miracle," exclaimed 
Mrs. Browning. Page begged to paint a portrait of the 
poet, of which Mrs. Browning said that he "painted a pic- 
ture of Robert like an Italian, and then presented it to me 
like a prince." The coloring was Venetian, and the picture 
was at first considered remarkable, but its color has entirely 
vanished now, so that it seems its painter was not successful 
in surprising the secret of Titian. In the spring of 19 10 
Mr. Barrett Browning showed this picture to some friends 
in his villa near Florence, and its thick, opaque surface 
hardly retained even a suggestion of color. 

Not the least of Mrs. Browning's enjoyment of that 
winter was the pleasure that Rome gave to her little son. 
"Penini is overwhelmed with attentions and gifts of all 
kinds," she wrote, and she described a children's party 



156 THE BROWNINGS 

given for him by Mrs. Page, who decorated the table with a 
huge cake, bearing "Penini " in sugar letters, where he 
sat at the head and did the honors. Browning all this time 
was writing, although the social allurements made sad 
havoc on his time. They wandered under the great ilex 
trees of the Pincio, and gazed at the Monte Mario pine. 
Then, as now, every one drove in that circular route on the 
Pincian hill, where carriages meet each other in passing 
every five minutes. With the Story s and other friends 
they often went for long drives and frequent picnics on the 
wonderful Campagna, that vast green sea that surrounds 
Rome, the Campagna Mystica. On one day Mr. Brown- 
ing met ''Hatty " Hosmer on the Spanish Steps, and said 
to her: "Next Saturday Ba and I are going to Albano on 
a picnic till Monday, and you and Leighton are to go with 
us." " Why this extravagance? " laughingly questioned Miss 
Hosmer. "On account of a cheque, a huona grazia, ihsit 
Ticknor and Fields of Boston have sent — one they were 
not in the least obliged to send," replied the poet. 

In those days there was no international copyright, but 
Mr. Browning's Boston publishers needed no legal con- 
straint to act with ideal honor. So on the appointed 
morning, a partie cane of artists — two poets, one sculp- 
tor, one painter — drove gayly through the Porta San 
Giovanni, on that road to Albano, with its wonderful 
views of the Claudian aqueducts in the distance, through 
whose arches the blue sky is bluer, and beyond which are 
the violet-hued Alban hills. Then, as now, the road led by 
the Casa dei Spirite, with its haunting associations, and its 
strange mural decorations of specters and wraiths. Past 
that overhanging cliff, with its tragic legend, they drove, 
encountering the long procession of wine carts, with their 
tinkling bells, and the dogs guarding the sleeping padrones. 
Passing the night in Albano, the next day they mounted 
donkeys for their excursion into the Alban hills, past lonely 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 157 

monasteries, up the heights of Rocca di Papa, where the 
traveler comes on the ancient camping-ground of Hanni- 
bal, and where they see the padres and acolytes sunning 
themselves on the slopes of Monte Cavo; on again, to the 
rocky terraces from which one looks down on Alba Longa 
and the depths of Lago di Nemi, beneath whose waters is 
still supposed to be the barque of Cahgula, and across the 
expanse of the green Campagna to where ^Eneas landed. 

Miss Hosmer is the authority on this poetic pilgrimage, 
and she related that they all talked of art, of the difficulties 
of art, — those encountered by the poet, the sculptor, and 
the painter, — each regarding his own medium of expres- 
sion as the most difficult. Mrs. Browning's "Hatty" had 
bestowed in her bag a volume of Mr. Browning's, and on 
the homeward journey from Albano to Rome he read 
aloud to them his "Saul." At the half-way house on the 
Campagna, the Torre di Mezza, they paused, to gaze at the 
"weird watcher of the Roman Campagna," the monument 
to Apuleia, whose ruins are said to have assumed her 
features. 

Nothing in all the classic atmosphere of Rome, filled 
with the most impressive associations of its mighty past, 
appealed more strongly to the Brownings than the glorious 
Campagna, with its apparently infinite open space, brilUant 
with myriads of flowers, and the vast billowing slopes that 
break like green waves against the purple hills, in their 
changeful panorama of clouds and mists and snow- 
crowned heights dazzling under a glowing sun. 

Fascinating as this winter in Rome had been to them, 
rich in friendships and in art, the Brownings were yet 
glad to return to their Florence with the May days, to 
give diligence and devotion to their poetic work, which 
nowhere proceeded so fehcitously as in Casa Guidi. 

Browning was now definitely engaged on the poems that 
were to make up the "Men and Women," Mrs. Brown- 



158 THE BROWNINGS 

ing was equally absorbed in "Aurora Leigh." Each morn- 
ing after their Arcadian repast of coffee and fruit, he went 
to his study, and she to the salotto, whose windows opened 
on the terrace looking out on old gray San Felice where 
she always wrote, to devote themselves to serious work. 
"Aurora Leigh" proceeded rapidly some mornings, and 
again its progress would remind her of the web of Penelope. 
During this summer Browning completed "In a Balcony," 
and wrote the " Holy Cross Day," the " Epistle of Karnish," 
and "Ben Karshook's Wisdom." Like his wife, Browning 
held poetry to be above all other earthly interests; he was 
a poet by nature and by grace, and his vast range of schol- 
arship, his "British-Museum-Library memory," and his 
artistic feeling and taste, all conserved to this one end. 
But poetry to him was not outside, but inclusive of the 
very fullest human life. Mrs. Browning's lines, 

"... No perfect artist is developed here 
From any imperfect woman, . . ." 

embodied his convictions as well, for man and woman 
alike. He had that royal gift of life in its fullness, an almost 
boundless capacity of enjoyment, and to him life meant 
the completest development and exercise of all its powers. 
The Brownings found their Florentine circle all in evi- 
dence. Mr. Lytton, a favorite and familiar visitor at Casa 
Guidi; Frederick Tennyson (and perhaps his "forty 
fiddlers" as well), and the Trollopes, Isa Blagden, and 
various wandering minstrels. They passed evenings with 
Mr. Lytton in his villa, and would walk home "to the 
song of nightingales by starlight and firefly light." To 
Mrs. Browning Florence looked more beautiful than ever 
after Rome. "I love the very stones of it," she said. 
Limitations of finance kept them in Florence all that 
summer. "A ship was to have brought us in something, and 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 159 

brought us in nothing," she explained to a friend in Eng- 
land, "and the nothing had a discount, beside." But she 
took comfort in the fact that Penini was quite as well and 
almost as rosy as ever, despite the intense heat; and the 
starlight and the song of the nightingales were not without 
consolation. A letter from Milsand ("one of the noblest and 
most intellectual men," says Mrs. Browning of him) came, 
and they were interested in his arraignment of the pa- 
ralysis of imagination in literature. In September she 
hears from Miss Mitford of her failing health, and ten- 
derly writes: " May the divine love in the face of our Lord 
Jesus Christ shine upon you day and night, with His in- 
effable tenderness." Mrs. Browning's religious feeling was 
always of that perfect reliance on the Divine Love that is 
the practical support of life. "For my own part," she con- 
tinues, "I have been long convinced that what we call 
death is a mere incident in life. ... I believe that the 
body of flesh is a mere husk that drops off at death, while 
the spiritual body emerges in glorious resurrection at once. 
Swedenborg says some people do not immediately realize 
that they have passed death, which seems to me highly 
probable. It is curious that Frederick Denison Maurice 
takes this precise view of the resurrection, with apparent 
unconsciousness of what Swedenborg has stated, and that 
I, too, long before I had ever read Swedenborg, or had even 
heard the name of Maurice, came to the same conclusion. 
... I believe in an active, human life, beyond death, as 
before it, an uninterrupted life." Mrs. Browning would 
have found herself in harmony with that spiritual genius. 
Dr. William James, who said : "And if our needs outrun the 
visible universe, why may not that be a sign that the in- 
visible universe is there? Often our faith in an uncertified 
result is the only thing that makes the result come true." 
Faith is the divine vision, and no one ever more absolutely 
realized this truth than EHzabeth Browning. 



i6o THE BROWNINGS 

"Ah, blessed vision! blood of God! 
My spirit beats her mortal bars, 
As down dark tides the glory slides, 
And star-like mingles with the stars." 

At another time Mrs. Browning remarked that she should 
fear for a revealed religion incapable of expansion, ac- 
cording to the needs of man; while Dr. James has said, 
"Believe what is in the line of your needs." Many simi- 
larities of expression reveal to how wonderful a degree Mrs. 
Browning had intuitively grasped phases of truth that be- 
came the recognized philosophy of a succeeding generation, 
and which were stamped by the brilHant and profound 
genius of William James, the greatest psychologist of the 
nineteenth century. "What comes from God has life in it," 
said Mrs. Browning, "and certainly from the growth of all 
living things, spiritual growth cannot be excepted." 

The summer passed "among our own nightingales and 
fireflies," playfully said Mrs. Browning, and in the autumn 
Mrs. Sartoris stopped to see them, on her way to Rome, 
"singing passionately and talking eloquently," 

Notwithstanding some illness, Mrs. Browning completed 
four thousand lines of "Aurora Leigh " before the new year 
of 1855, in which were expressed all her largest philosophic 
thought, and her deepest insight into the problems of life. 
Fogazzaro, whose recent death has deprived Italy of her 
greatest literary inspirer since Carducci, said of "Aurora 
Leigh" that he wished the youth of Italy might study this 
great poem, — "those who desire poetic fame that they 
might gain a high conception of poetry; the weak, in that 
they might find stimulus for strength; the sad and dis- 
couraged, in that they might find comfort and encourage- 
ment." It was this eminent Italian novelist and Senator 
(the King of Italy naming a man as Senator, not in the 
least because of any political reasons, but to confer on him 
the honor of recognition of his genius in Literature, Science, 



THEIR LIFE AND ART i6i 

or Art, and a very inconvenient, however highly prized, 
honor he often finds it), — Senator Antonio Fogazzaro, 
who contributed, to an Italian biography ^ of the Brownings 
by Fanny Zampini, Contessa Salazar, an "Introduction" 
which is a notable piece of critical appreciation of the 
wedded poets from the Italian standpoint. The Senator re- 
cords himself as believing that few poets can be read 
"with so much intellectual pleasure and spiritual good; 
for if the works of Robert and Elizabeth Browning sur- 
prise us by the vigorous originahty of their thought," 
he continues, "they also show us a rare and salutary 
spectacle, — two souls as great in their moral character 
as in their poetic imagination. * Aurora Leigh ' I esteem 
Mrs. Browning's masterpiece. . . . The ideal poet is a 
prophet, inspired by God to proclaim eternal truth. . . ." 

The student of Italian literature will find a number of 
critical appreciations of the Brownings, written within 
the past forty or fifty years, some of which offer no little 
interest. "Every man has two countries, his own and 
Italy," and the land they had made their own in love and 
devotion returned this devotion in measure overflowing. 

Robert and Elizabeth Browning would have been 
great, — even immortally great, as man and woman, if they 
had not been great poets. They both lived, in a simple, 
natural way, the essential life of the spirit, the life of schol- 
arship and noble culture, of the profound significance of 
thought, of creative energy, of wide interest in all the im- 
portant movements of the day, and of beautiful and sincere 
friendships. 

"O life, O poetry, 
Which means life in life, " 

wrote Mrs. Browning. 

The character of Mrs. Browning has been so often por- 
trayed as that of some abnormal being, half-nervous inva- 

^ " La Vita e le Opere di Roberto et Elisabetta Barrett Browning. 
Feme: Societa Typografico-Editrice Nazionale." 



i62 THE BROWNINGS 

lid, half-angel, as if she were a special creation of nature 
with no particular relation to the great active world of men 
and women, that it is quite time to do away with the cate- 
gory of nonsense and hterary hallucination. One does not 
become less than woman by being more. Mrs. Browning 
fulfilled every sweetest relation in life as daughter, sister, 
friend, wife, and mother; and her life was not the less nor- 
mal in that it was one of exceptional power and exaltation. 
She saw in Art the most potent factor for high service, and 
she held that it existed for Love's sake, for the sake of 
human co-operation with the purposes of God. 



CHAPTER VIII 
1855-1861 

"Inward evermore 
To outward, — so in life, and so in art 
Which stiU is life." 

"... I love thee with the breath, 
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose, 
I shall but love thee better after death." 

London Life — An Interlxide in Paris — "Aurora Leigh" — 
Florentine Days — "Men and Women" — The Haw- 
THORNES — "The Old Yellow Book" — A Sumjier in 
Normandy — The Eternal City — The Storys and Other 
Friends — Lilies of Florence — "It is Beautiful!" 

The Florentine winter is by no means an uninterrupted 
dream of sunshine and roses; the tramontana sweeps down 
from the encircling Apennines, with its peculiarly piercing 
cold that penetrates the entire system with the unerring 
precision of the Roentgen ray; torrents of icy rains fall; 
and the purple hills, on whose crest St. Domenico met St. 
Benedict, are shrouded in clouds and mist. All the loveli- 
ness of Florence seems to be utterly effaced, till one ques- 
tions if it existed except as a mirage ; but when the storm 
ceases, and the sun shines again, there is an instantaneous 
transformation. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, 
the spell of enchantment resumes its sway over the Flower 
Town, and all is forgiven and forgotten. 

The winter of 1855 was bitterly cold, and by January 
the Brownings fairly barricaded themselves in two rooms 
which could best be heated, and in these fires were kept 



1 64 THE BROWNINGS 

up by day as well as night. In April, however, the divine 
days came again, and the green hillslope from the Palazzo 
Pitti to the Boboli Gardens was gay with flowers. Mr. 
Browning gave four hours every day to dictating his poems 
to a friend who was transcribing them for him. Mrs. 
Browning had completed some seven thousand lines of 
"Aurora Leigh," but not one of these had yet been copied 
for publication. Various hindrances beset them, but 
finally in June they left for England, their most important 
impedimenta being sixteen thousand Hnes of poetry, almost 
equally divided between them, comprising his manuscript 
for "Men and Women," and hers for "Aurora Leigh," 
complete, save for the last three books. The change was 
by no means unalloyed joy. To give up, even temporarily, 
their " dream-life of Florence," leaving the old tapestries and 
pre-Giotto pictures, for London lodgings, was not exhil- 
arating; but after a week in Paris they found themselves in 
an apartment in No. 13 Dorset Street, Manchester Square, 
where they remained until October, every hour filled with 
engagements or work. Proof-sheets were coming in at all 
hours; likewise friends, with the usual contingent of the 
"devastators of a day," and all that fatigue and interrup- 
tion and turmoil that lies in wait for the pilgrim returning 
to his former home, beset and entangled them. Mrs. 
Browning's youngest brother, Alfred Barrett, was married 
that summer to his cousin Lizzie, the "pretty cousin " to 
whom allusion has already been made as the original of 
Mrs. Browning's poem, "A Portrait." They were mar- 
ried in Paris at the English Embassy, and passed the sum- 
mer on the Continent. Mrs. Browning's sister Henrietta 
(Mrs. Surtees Cook) was unable to come up to London, so 
that the hoped-for pleasure of seeing this brother and sister 
was denied her; but Miss Arabel Barrett was close at hand 
in the Wimpole Street home, and the sisters were much 
together. Mr. Barrett had never changed his mental atti- 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 165 

tude regarding the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth, nor 
that of any of his children, and while this was a constant 
and never-forgotten grief with Mrs. Browning, there seems 
no necessity for prolonged allusion to it. The matter can 
only be relegated to the realms of non-comprehension as the 
idiosyncrasy of an otherwise good man, of intelligence and 
much nobility of nature. 

The Brownings were invited to Knebworth, to visit 
Lord Lytton, but they were unable to avail themselves of 
the pleasure because of proof-sheets and contingent demands 
which only writers with books in press can understand. 
Proof-sheets are unquestionably endowed with some super- 
human power of volition, and invariably arrive at the 
psychological moment when, if their author were being 
married or buried, the ceremony would have to be post- 
poned until they were corrected. But the poets were not 
without pleasant interludes, either; as when Tennyson 
came from the Isle of Wight to London for three or four 
days, two of which he passed with the Brownings. He 
''dined, smoked, and opened his heart" to them; and con- 
cluded this memorable visit at the witching hour of half- 
past two in the morning, after reading "Maud" aloud the 
evening before from the proof-sheets. The date of this 
event is estabhshed by an inscription afiixed to the back of 
a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, made on that night by 
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and which is now in the possession 
of Robert Barrett Browning. This inscription, written 
by Robert Browning, reads: "Tennyson read his poem 
' Maud' to E. B. B., R. B., Arabel, and Rossetti, on the 
evening of Sept. 27th, 1855, at 13, Dorset Street. Rossetti 
made this sketch of Tennyson, as he sat, reading, on one 
end of the sofa, E. B. B. being on the other end." And 
this is signed, "R. B. March 6th, 1874 ... 19, Warwick 
Crescent." As the date is Mrs. Browning's birthday, it is 
easy to realize how, in that March of 1874, he was recalling 



i66 THE BROWNINGS 

tender and beloved memories. On the drawing Itself Mrs. 
Browning had, at the time of the reading, copied the 
first two lines of "Maud." Tennyson replied to a ques- 
tion from William Sharp, who in 1882 wrote to the 
Laureate to ask about this night, that he had "not the 
slightest recollection" of Rossetti's presence; but the 
inscription on the picture estabhshes the fact. William 
Michael Rossetti was also one of the group, and a record 
that he made quite supports the fact of Tennyson's un- 
consciousness of his brother's presence, for he says: "So 
far as I remember the Poet-Laureate neither saw what my 
brother was doing nor knew of it afterward." And as 
if every one of this gifted group present that night left on 
record some impression, Dante Gabriel Rossetti has noted 
that, after Tennyson's reading. Browning read his "Fra 
Lippo Lippi," and "with as much sprightly variation as 
there was in Tennyson of sustained continuity." In a letter 
to Allingham, Rossetti also alluded to this night, and in- 
fused a mild reproach to Mrs. Browning in that her atten- 
tion was diverted by "two not very exciting ladies"; and 
in a letter to Mrs. Tennyson, Mrs. Browning speaks of 
being "interrupted by some women friends whom I loved, 
but yet could not help wishing a little further just then, that 
I might sit in the smoke, and hsten to the talk," after the 
reading. So, from putting together, mosaic fashion, all the 
allusions made by the cloud of witnesses, the reader con- 
structs a rather accurate picture of that night of the gods. 
Mrs. Browning, who "was born to poet-uses," like the 
suitor of her own "Lady Geraldine," was in a rapture of 
pleasure that evening, and of "Maud " she wrote: "The 
close is magnificent, full of power, and there are beautiful, 
thrilling lines all through. If I had a heart to spare, the 
Laureate would have won mine." Tennyson's voice she 
found "like an organ, music rather than speech," and she 
was " captivated " by his naivete, as he stopped every now 




&s 



?i 5 ^ 'T' S 



o a ct{ 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 167 

and then to say, "There 's a wonderful touch!" Mrs. 
Browning writes to Mrs. Tennyson of "the deep pleasure 
we had in Mr. Tennyson's visit to us." She adds: 

"He did n't come back, as he said he would, to teach me the 
'Brook' (which I persist, nevertheless, in fancying I understand 
a little), but he did so much and left such a voice (both him 
'and a voice!') crying out 'Maud' to us, and helping the effect 
of the poem by the personality, that it 's an increase of joy and 
life to us ever." 

Deciding to pass the ensuing winter in Paris, the Brown- 
ings found themselves anxious to make the change, that 
they might feel settled for the time, as she needed entire 
freedom from demands that she might proceed with her 
"Aurora Leigh." He had conceived the idea of revising and 
recasting " Sordello." They passed an evening with Ruskin, 
however, and presented "young Leighton " to him. They 
met Carlyle at Forster's, finding him "in great force " — 
of denunciations. They met Kinglake, and were at the 
Proctors, and of the young poet, Anne Adelaide Proctor, 
Mrs. Browning says, " How I like Adelaide's face!" Mrs. 
Sartoris and Mrs. Kemble were briefly in London, and 
Kenyon, the beloved friend, vanished to the Isle of Wight. 
To Penini's great delight, Wilson, the maid, married a 
Florentine, one Ferdinando Romagnoli, who captivated 
the boy by his talk of Florence, and Penini caught up his 
pretty Itahan enthusiasms, and discoursed of Florentine 
skies, and the glories of the Cascine, to any one whom he 
could waylay. 

In Paris they first estabhshed themselves in the Rue de 
Crenelle, in the old Faubourg San Germain, a location they 
soon exchanged for a more comfortable apartment in the 
Rue de Colisee, just off the Champs Elysees. Here they 
renewed their intercourse with Lady Elgin (now an inva- 
lid) and with her daughter. Lady Augusta Bruce, Madame 
Mohl, and with other friends. Mrs. Browning was absorbed 



i68 THE BROWNINGS 

in her great poem, which she was able to complete, how- 
ever, only after their return to London the next June, and 
never did an important literary work proceed with less 
visible craft. She lay on her sofa, half supported by cush- 
ions, writing with pencil on little scraps of paper, which she 
would slip under the pillows if any chance visitor came in. 
"Elizabeth is lying on the sofa, writing hke a spirit," 
Browning wrote to Harriet Hosmer. To Mrs. Browning 
Ruskin wrote, praising her husband's poems, which grati- 
fied her deeply, and she replied, in part, that when he wrote 
to praise her poems, of course she had to bear it. "I 
could n't turn around and say, * Well, and why don't you 
praise him, who is worth twenty of me? ' One 's forced," 
she continued, "to be rather decent and modest for one's 
husband as well as for one's self, even if it 's harder. I 
could n't pull at your coat to read * Pippa Passes,' for in- 
stance. . . . But you have put him on your shelf, so we 
have both taken courage to send you his new volumes, 
' Men and Women,' . . . that you may accept them as a 
sign of the esteem and admiration of both of us." Mrs. 
Browning considered these poems beyond any of his pre- 
vious work, save "Paracelsus," but there is no visible 
record left of what she must have felt regarding that tender 
and exquisite dedication to her, that "One Word More 
. . . To E. B. B.," which must have been to her 

"The heart's sweet Scripture to be read at night." 

These lines are, indeed, a fitting companion-piece to her 
"Sonnets from the Portuguese." For all these poems, 
his "fifty men and women," were for her, — his "moon of 
poets." 

"There they are, my fifty men and women 
Naming me the fifty poems finished! 
Take them, Love, the book and me together;' 
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 169 

I shall never, in the years remaining, 

Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, 

Make you music that should all-express me; 



Verse and nothing else have I to give you. 

Other heights in other lives, God willing; 

All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!" 

So he wrote to his " one angel, — borne, see, on my bosom ! " 
For her alone were the 

"Silent, silver lights and darks undreamed of," 

and while there was one side to face the world with, he 
thanked God that there was another, — 

"One to show a woman when he loves her !" 

It was Rossetti, however, who was the true interpreter 
of Browning to Ruskin, — for if it requires a god to recog- 
nize a god, so likewise in poetic recognitions. To Rossetti 
the poems comprised in "Men and Women" were the 
"elixir of life." The moving drama of Browning's poetry 
fascinated him. Some years before he had chanced upon 
"PauHne" in the British Museum, and being unable to 
procure the book, had copied every line of it. The "high 
seriousness" which Aristotle claims to be one of the high 
virtues of poetry, impressed Rossetti in Browning, What 
a drama of the soul universal was revealed in that "fifty 
men and women"! What art, what music, coming down 
the ages, from Italy, from Germany, and what pictures 
from dim frescoes, and long-forgotten paintings hid in 
niche and cloister, were interpreted in these poems! How 
one follows "poor brother Lippo" in his escapade: 

". . .1 could not paint all night — 
Ouf ! I leaned out of window for fresh air. 
There came a hurry of feet and little feet, 
A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song, — 



170 THE BROWNINGS 

Flower o' the broom, 

Take away love, and our earth is a tomb I 

Flower o' the quince, 

I let Lisa go, and what good in life since ? " 

And in "Andrea del Sarto" what passionate pathos of 
an ideal missed! 

"But all the play, the insight and the stretch — 
Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out? 
Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, 
We might have risen to Rafael, I and you! 



Had you . . . but brought a mind! 

Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged 

'God and the glory! never care for gain. 

The present by the future, what is that? 

Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo! 

Rafael is waiting; up to God, all three!' 

I might have done it for you. . . ." 

And that exquisite idyl of "the love of wedded souls" in 
"By the Fire-side." It requires no diviner to discover from 
whose image he drew the line, 

"My perfect wife, my Leonor." 

How Browning's art fused poetic truth and poetic beauty 
in all these poems, vital with keen and shrewd observation, 
deep with significance, and pervaded by the perpetual 
recognition of a higher range of achievements than are real- 
ized on earth. 

"A man's grasp should exceed his reach, 
Or what 's a heaven for? " 

In all these poems can be traced the magic of Italy and 
happiness. (Are the two more than half synonymous?) 
The perfect sympathy, the delicate divination and intuitive 
comprehension with which Browning was surrounded by 




eu, 0, 



S 5 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 171 

his wife, were the supreme source of the stimulus and de- 
velopment of his powers as a poet. 

The Parisian winter was full of movement and interest. 
No twentieth-century prophet had then arisen to instruct 
the populace how to live on twenty-four hours a day, but 
the Brownings captured what time they could rescue from 
the devouring elements, rose early, breakfasted at nine, and 
gave the next hour and a half to Penini's lessons, — "the 
darling, idle, distracted child," who was "blossoming like 
a rose " all this time; who " learned everything by mag- 
netism," and, however "idle," was still able in seven weeks 
to read French "quite surprisingly." Mrs. Browning had 
already finished and transcribed some six thousand lines 
(making five books) of "Aurora Leigh "; but she planned 
at least two more books to complete the poem, which 
must needs be ready by June; and when, by the author's 
calendar, it is February, by some necromancy June is apt 
to come in the next morning. The Brownings made it an 
invariable rule to receive no visitors till after four, but the 
days had still a trick of vanishing like the fleet angel who 
departs before he leaves his blessing. At all events, the 
last days of May came before "Aurora Leigh" was com- 
pleted, and its author half despairingly realized that two 
weeks more were needed for the transcription of her little 
slips to the pages ready for the press. 

Meantime Browning had occupied himself for a time in 
an attempt to revise "Sordello," an effort soon abandoned, 
as he saw that, for good or ill, the work must stand as first 
written. 

Madame Mohl's "evenings" continued to attract Brown- 
ing, where he met a most congenial and brilliant circle, and 
while his wife was unable to accompany him to these mild 
festivities, she insisted that he should avail himself of these 
opportunities for intercourse with French society. With 
Lady Monson he went to see Ristori in "Medea," finding 



172 THE BROWNINGS 

her great, but not, in his impression, surpassing Rachel. 
Monckton Milnes comes over to Paris, and a Frenchman of 
letters gives a dinner for him, at which Browning meets 
George Sand and Cavour. 

The success of "Men and Women" was by this time as- 
sured. Browning stood in the full Hght of recognition on 
both sides the ocean. For America — or rather, perhaps, 
one should say, Boston, for American recognition focused 
in Boston (which was then, at all events, incontestably 
the center of all "sweetness and Hght") — discerned the 
greatness of Robert Browning as swiftly as any trans- 
atlantic dwellers on the watch-tower. / 

Rossetti, who from the days that he copied "Pauhne " 
in the British Museum Library, not knowing the author, 
was an ardent admirer of Browning, found himself in 
Paris, and he and Browning passed long mornings in the 
Louvre. The painter declared that Browning's knowledge 
of early Italian art was beyond that of any one whom he 
had met, Ruskin not excepted. 

Ruskin was a standard of artistic measurement in those 
days to a degree hardly conceivable now; not that much 
of his judgment does not stand the test of time, but that 
authoritative criticism has so many embodiments. Mrs. 
Browning, to whom Ruskin was one of the nearest of her 
circle, considered him a critic who was half a poet as well, 
and her clear insight discerned what is now universally rec- 
ognized, that he was "encumbered by a burning imagi- 
nation." She told him that he was apt to light up any 
object he looked upon, "just as we, when we carried 
torches into the Vatican, were not clear as to how much 
we brought to that wonderful Demosthenes, folding the 
marble round him in its thousand folds," and questioned 
as to where was the dividing line between the sculptor and 
the torch-bearer. This fairly clairvoyant insight of Mrs. 
Browning into character, the ability to discern defects as 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 173 

well as virtues where she loved, and to love where she 
discerned defects, is still further illustrated by a letter of 
hers to Ruskin on the death of Miss Mitford. " But no, her 
' judgment ' was not ' unerring,' " wrote Mrs. Browning. 
" She ^as too intensely sympathetic not to err often . . . 
if she loved a person it was enough. . . . And yet . . . 
her judgment could be fine and discriminating, especially 
upon subjects connected with life and society and manners." 
Again, to a friend who had met a great bereavement 
she also wrote in these Paris days: 

''We get knowledge in losing what we hoped for, and liberty 
by losing what we love. This world is a fragment, or, rather, 
a segment, and it will be rounded presently. Not to doubt 
that is the greatest blessing it gives now. The common im- 
pression of death is as false as it is absurd. A mere change of 
circumstances, — what more? And how near these spirits are, 
how conscious of us, how full of active energy, of tender reminis- 
cence and interest in us? Who shall dare to doubt? For myself, 
I do not doubt at all." 

In that latest collection of Browning's poems, no one 
excited more discussion at the time than "The Statue and 
the Bust." There being then no Browning Spcieties to 
authoritatively decide the poet's real meaning on any dis- 
puted point, the controversy assumed formidable propor- 
tions. Did Browning mean this poem to be an apologia for 
illegal love? was asked with bated breath. 

The statue of Fernandino di Medici, in the Piazza dell' 
Annunziata, in Florence, — that magnificent equestrian 
group by Giovanni da Bologna, — is one of the first monu- 
ments that the visitor who has a fancy for tracing out poetic 
legends fares forth to see. As an example of plastic art, 
alone, it is well worth a pilgrimage; but as touched by the 
magic of the poet's art, it is magnetic with life. Dating 
back to 1608, it was left for Robert Browning to invest it 
with immortality. 



174 THE BROWNINGS 

"There's a palace in Florence, the world knows well 
And a statue watches it from the square." 

In the poem Mr. Browning alludes to the cornice, 
"where now is the empty shrine"; but his son believes 
that there never was any bust in this niche, the bust being 
simply the poet's creation. The statue of the Grand Duke 
is remarkable enough to inspire any story ; and the Floren- 
tine noble may well take pride in the manner that "John of 
Douay " has presented him, if he still "contrives" to see it, 
and still "laughs in his tomb " at the perpetual pilgrim- 
age that is made to the scene of the legend, as well as to the 
royal Villa Petraja, also immortalized in Browning's poem. 

June came, the closing books of "Aurora Leigh" had 
been written, and under the roof of her dear friend and 
cousin, Kenyon, who had begged the Brownings to accept 
the loan of his house in Devonshire Place, the last pages 
were transcribed, and the dedication made to the generous 
friend who was the appointed good angel of their lives. 
They were saddened by Kenyon's illness, which impris- 
oned him for that summer on the Isle of Wight, and after 
seeing "Aurora Leigh" through the press, they passed a 
httle time with him at Cowes, and also visited Mrs. Brown- 
ing's sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook), before setting 
out for Italy. No one in London missed them more than 
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. "With them has gone one of my 
delights," he said; "an evening resort where I never felt 
unhappy." 

The success of "Aurora Leigh " was immediate, a second 
edition being called for within a fortnight, and edition after 
edition followed. This work, of which, twelve years before, 
she had a dim foreshadowing, as of a novel in verse, has the 
twofold interest of a great dramatic poem and of a philo- 
sophic commentary on art and life. To estimate it only as a 
social treatise is to recognize but one element in its kalei- 
doscopic interest. Yet the narrative, it must be confessed, 




Equestrian Statfe of Ferdinando de ' medici, 
BY Giovanni da Bologna. 

IN the piazza dell ' ANNUNZIATA, FLORENCE. 

''There's a palace in Florence the world knows well. 
And a statue watches it from the square." 

The Rin^ and the Book. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 175 

is fantastic and unreal. When the conception of the work 
first dawned upon her, she said she preferred making her 
story to choosing that of any legend, for the theme; but 
the plot is its one defect, and is only saved from being a 
serious defect by the richness and splendor of thought with 
which it is invested. The poem is to some degree a spirit- 
ual autobiography ; its narrative part having no foundation 
in reaHty, but on this foundation she has recorded her 
highest convictions on the philosophy of life. Love, Art, 
Ethics, the Christianity of Christ, — all are here, in this 
almost inexhaustible mine of intellectual and spiritual 
wealth. It is a poem peculiarly calculated to kindle and 
inspire. What a passage is this: 

" . . . T can live 
At least my soul's life, without alms from men, 
And if it be in heaven instead of earth, 
Let heaven look to it, — I am not afraid." 

A profound occult truth is embodied in the following: 

"Whate'er our state we must have made it first; 
And though the thing displease us, — aye, perhaps, 
Displease us warrantably, never doubt 
That other states, though possible once, and then 
Rejected by the instinct of our lives, 
If then adopted had displeased us more. 



What we choose may not be good; 

But that we choose it, proves it good for us." 

No Oriental savant could more forcibly present his doc- 
trine of karma than has Mrs. Browning in these lines. 
Her recognition of the power of poetry is here expressed: 

"And plant a poet's word even deep enough 
In any man's breast, looking presently 
For oflFshoots, you have done more for the man 
Than if you dressed him in a broadcloth coat, 
And warmed his Sunday pottage at your fire." 



176 THE BROWNINGS 

Poetry was to her as serious a thing as Hfe itself. "There 
has been no playing at skittles for me in either poetry, or 
life," she said; "I never mistook pleasure for the final 
cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet." 

In the success of "Aurora Leigh " she was herself sur- 
prised. Private letters from strangers filled with the warm- 
est, even if sometimes indiscriminate, praises, rained down 
upon her, and she found the press "astonishing in its good 
will." That her "golden-hearted Robert" was "in ecsta- 
sies about it, far more than as if it had been a book of his 
own," was apparently her most precious reward. Milsand, 
who she had fancied would hardly like this poem, wrote 
a critique of it for the Revue which touched her with its "ex- 
traordinary kindness." He asked and obtained permission 
to translate it into French, and in a letter to Miss Sarianna 
Browning she speaks of her happiness that he should thus 
distinguish the poem. 

Soon after their arrival in Florence came the saddest of 
news, that of the death of John Kenyon, their beloved 
friend, whose last thoughtful kindness was to endow them 
with a legacy insuring to them that freedom from mate- 
rial care which is so indispensable to the best achievements 
in art. During his life he had given to them one hundred 
pounds a year, and in his will he left them ten thousand 
guineas, — the largest of the many legacies that his generous 
will contained. 

The carnival, always gay in Florence, was exceedingly 
so that year, and Penini, whose ardor for a blue domino 
was gratified, and who thought of nothing else for the 
time being, seemed to communicate his raptures, so that 
Browning proposed taking a box at the opera ball, and 
entertaining some invited friends with gallantina and cham- 
pagne. Suddenly the air grew very mild, and he decided 
that his wife might and must go ; she sent out hastily to 
buy a mask and domino (he had already a beautiful black 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 177 

silk one, which she later transmuted into a black silk gown 
for herself), and while her endurance and amusement kept 
her till two o'clock in the morning, the poet and his friends 
remained till after four. The ItaHan carnival, however 
wild and free it may be (and is) , yet never degenerates into 
rudeness. The inborn delicacy and gentle refinement of 
the people render this impossible. Yet for the time being 
there is perfect social equality, and at this ball the Grand 
Duke and Wilson's husband, Ferdinando, were on terms of 
fellowship. 

In the early April of that spring the summer suddenly 
dawned upon lovely Florence like a transformation scene 
on a stage. The trees in the Cascine were all a "green 
mist." Everywhere was that ethereal enchantment of the 
Flower City, with her gleaming towers and domes, her 
encircling purple hills and picturesque streets. And how, 
indeed, could any one who has watched the loveliness of a 
Florentine springtime ever escape its haunting spell? The 
dweller in Italy may see a thousand things to desire, — 
better public privileges, more facilities for comfort, but the 
day comes when, if he has learned to love the Itahan atmos- 
phere so intensely that all the glories of earth could not 
begin to compensate for it, he would give every conceiv- 
able achievement of modern art and progress for one hour 
among those purple hills, for one hour with the sunset splen- 
dors over the towers, and the olive-crowned heights of Fiesole 
and Bellosguardo; or to hear again the impassioned strains 
of street singers ring out in pathetic intensity in the bewil- 
dering moonUght. La Bella Firenze, lying dream-enchanted 
among her amethyst hills, would draw her lover from the 
wilds of Siberia, for even one of those etherial evenings, 
when the stars blaze in a splendor over San Miniato, or 
one rose-crowned morning, when the golden sunshine 
gilds the tower of the old cathedral on Fiesole. 

In that spring Mrs. Stowe visited Florence, and the 



178 THE BROWNINGS 

Brownings liked her and rejoiced that she had moved 
the world for good. To Mrs. Jameson Mrs. Browning 
wrote that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a "sign of the 
times." She read Victor Hugo's "Contemplations," find- 
ing some of the personal poems "overcoming in their pa- 
thos"; they went to tea on the terrace at Bellosguardo, in 
April evenings, gazing over Florence veiled in transparent 
blue haze in the valley below. 

In this April Mrs. Browning's father died; she had never 
ceased to hope for reconciliation, and her sorrow was great, 
but, as usual, she was gently serene, "not despondingly 
calm," she said. Mrs. Jameson again came to Florence, and 
there were more teas on overhanging terraces, and enjoy- 
ments of the divine sunsets. 

In August they went with Miss Blagden, Mr. Lytton, and 
one or two others to again make villeggiatura at Bagni di 
Lucca, where Mrs. Browning rose every morning at six to 
bathe in the rapid little mountain stream, — finding herself 
strengthened by this heroic practice, — and Penini flour- 
ished "Hke a rose possessed by a fairy." 

The succeeding winter was passed in Florence, Mrs. 
Browning instructing her little son in German, and herself 
reveled in French and German romances. Her rest was 
always gained in lying on the sofa and reading novels; 
Browning, who cared Httle for fiction, found his relaxation 
in drawing. He taught Penini on the piano, and the boy 
read French, German, and Italian every day, and played 
in the open air under the very shadow of the Palazzo Pitti. 

The Hawthornes, who had met the Brownings in London 
at a breakfast given by Lord Houghton, came up from 
Rome, and Mrs. Hawthorne declared that the grasp of 
Browning's hand "gives a new value to life." They passed 
an evening at Casa Guidi, and Mrs. Hawthorne recorded 
that in the corridor, as they entered, was a little boy who 
answered in the affirmative as to whether he were "Penini," 




►J . ». 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 179 

and who "looked like a waif of poetry, lovelier stiU in the 
bright light of the drawing-room." Mr. Browning instantly 
appeared with his cordial welcome, leading them into the 
salon that looked out on the terrace, filled with growing 
plants. From San Felice there came the chanting of 
music, and the flowers, the melody, the stars hanging low 
in the sky, all ablaze over San Miniato, with the poet and 
his child, all conspired to entrance the sensitive and poetic 
Mrs. Hawthorne. Then Mrs. Browning came in, "deh- 
cate, like a spirit, the ethereal poet-wife, with a cloud of 
curls half concealing her face, and with the fairy fingers 
that gave a warm, human pressure, — a very embodiment 
of heart and intellect." Mrs. Hawthorne had brought her 
a branch of pink roses, which Mrs. Browning pinned on 
her black velvet gown. 

They were taken into the drawing-room, a lofty, spacious 
apartment where Gobelin tapestries, richly carved furni- 
ture, pictures, and vertu all enchanted Mrs. Hawthorne, 
and they talked "on no very noteworthy topics," Haw- 
thorne afterward recorded, though he added that he won- 
dered that the conversation of Browning should be so clear 
and so much to the purpose, considering that in his poetry 
one ran "into the high grass of obscure allusion." The 
poet Bryant and his daughter were present that evening, 
a little to the regret of Mrs. Hawthorne, and there were tea 
and strawberries, Mrs. Browning presiding at the tray, and 
Penini, "graceful as Ganymede," passing the cake. 

The Brownings left Florence soon after this evening. The 
summer of 1858 was passed in Normandy, in company 
with Mr. Browning's father and his sister Sarianna, aU of 
them occupying together a house on the shore of the 
Channel, near Havre. They confessed themselves in a 
heavenly state of mind, equally appreciative of the French 
people, — manners, cooking, cutlets, and costumes, aU re- 
garded with perpetual admiration. Penini, too, was by no 



i8o THE BROWNINGS 

means behind in his pretty, childish enthusiasms. He 
was now nine years of age, reading easily French and Ger- 
man, as well as the two languages, English and Italian — 
each of which was as much his native tongue as the other — 
and with much proficiency at the piano. Browning already 
played duets with his little son, while the happy mother 
looked smilingly on. Mrs. Browning was one who lived 
daily her real life. For there is much truth in the Oriental 
truism that our real life is that which we do not live, — in 
our present environment, at least. She always gave of her 
best because she herself dwelt in the perpetual atmosphere 
of high thought. Full of glancing humor and playfulness of 
expression, never scorning homely conditions, she yet lived 
constantly in the realm of nobleness. 

" Poets become such 
By scorning nothing," 

she has said. 

The following winter found them again in Rome, where 
Mrs. Browning was much occupied with Italian politics. 
Her two deepest convictions were faith in the honest pur- 
poses of Louis Napoleon, and her enthusiasm for Italian 
liberty and unity. In her poem, "A Tale of Villafranca," 
she expressed her convictions and feelings. One of their 
nearer friends in Rome was Massimo d'Azeglio, the Prime 
Minister of Piedmont from 1849 to 1852, one of the purest 
of Italian patriots, who was full of hope for Italy. The 
English Minister Plenipotentiary to Rome at that time was 
Lord Odo Russell, and when the Prince of Wales (later 
King Edward VII) arrived in Rome, the Minister (later 
Lord Amp thill) invited (through Colonel Bruce) several 
gentlemen to meet him, Colonel Bruce said to Browning 
that he knew it "would gratify the Queen that the Prince 
should make the acquaintance of Mr. Browning." Mrs. 
Browning spoke of "the little prince" in one of her 



THEIR LIFE AND ART i8i 

letters to Isa Blagden as "a gentle, refined boy," and she 
notes how Massimo d'Azeglio came to see them, and 
talked nobly, and confesses herself more proud of his visit 
"than of another personal distinction, though I don't pre- 
tend to have been insensible to that," she adds, evidently 
referring to the meeting with the young prince. 

Mrs. Browning's love for novels seemed to have been in- 
herited by her son, for this winter he was reading an Italian 
translation of "Monte Cristo" with such enthusiasm as to 
resolve to devote his life to fiction. "Dear Mama," he 
gravely remarked, "for the future I mean to read novels. 
I shall read all Dumas's to begin." 

On their return to Florence in the spring, Mrs. Browning 
gives William Page a letter of introduction to Ruskin, com- 
mending Mr. Page "as a man earnest, simple and noble, 
who "has not been successful in life, and when I say life 
I include art, which is life to him. You will recognize in 
this name Page/' she continues, "the painter of Robert's 
portrait which you praised for its Venetian color, and 
criticised in other respects," she concluded. And she 
desires Ruskin to know the "wonder and light and 
color and space and air" that Page had put into his "Venus 
Rising from the Sea," which the Paris salon of that summer 
had refused on the ground of its nudity, — a scruple that 
certainly widely differentiates the Salon of 1858 from that 
of 1911. 

Salvini, even then already recognized as a great artist, 
was playing in a theater in Florence that spring, and the 
Brownings saw with great enjoyment and admiration his 
impersonations of Hamlet and Othello. 

On a glowing June morning Browning was crossing the 
Piazza San Lorenzo, when the market-folk had all their 
curious wares of odds and ends spread about on tables. At 
one of these he chanced on "the square old yellow book" 
which held the story of the Franceschini tragedy, which 



i82 THE BROWNINGS 

the poet's art transmuted into his greatest poem, "The 
Ring and the Book." No other single work of Browning's 
can rival this in scope and power. It would seem as if he 
had, at the moment, almost a prescience of the incalculable 
value of this crumpled and dilapidated volume; as if he 
intuitively recognized what he afterward referred to as 
"the predestination." On his way homeward he opened 
the book; 

"... through street and street, 

At the Strozzi, at the Pillar, at the Bridge; 

Till, by the time I stood at home again 

In Casa Guidi by Felice Church, 



I had mastered the contents, knew the whole truth." 

In this brief time he had comprehended the entire story 
of the trial and execution of Count Guido Franceschino, 
Nobleman of Arezzo, for the murder of his wife, Pompilia, 
and apparently much of the conception of his great work of 
future years, "The Ring and the Book," took possession 
of him at once. But it was like the seed that must ger- 
minate and grow. Little indeed did he dream that in 
this chance purchase he had been led to the material for the 
supreme achievement of his art. 

One evening before leaving Florence for Siena, where the 
Brownings had taken the Villa Alberti for the summer, 
they had Walter Savage Landor to tea, and also Miss Blag- 
den and Kate Field, then a young girl, studying music in 
Florence, who was under Miss Blagden's charge. Just 
as the tea was placed on the table, Browning turned to his 
honored guest, and thanked him for his defense of old 
songs; and opening Landor's latest book, "Last Fruit," 
he read in a clear, vibrant voice from the "Idylls of The- 
ocritus." The chivalrous deference touched the aged poet. 
"Ah, you are kind," said he; "you always find out the 
best bits in my books." 




^5 



■?"^ 






THEIR LIFE AND ART 183 

The loyal homage rendered by the younger poet, in all the 
glow of his power, to the "old master," was lovely to see. 
As will be recalled, Landor had been one of the first to recog- 
nize the genius of Browning when his youthful poem, "Par- 
acelsus," appeared. Landor had then written to Southey: 
"God grant that Robert Browning live to be much greater, 
high as he now stands among most of the living." 

It was one noon soon after this evening that Landor 
came to Casa Guidi, desolate and distraught, declaring he 
had left his villa on the Fiesolean slope never to return, 
because of his domestic difficulties. The Brownings 
were about leaving for Siena and Mr. Browning decided 
to engage an apartment for the venerable poet, when the 
Storys, who were making villeggiatura in the strange old 
medieval city, invited Landor to be their guest. The villa 
where the Storys were domiciled was near the Brownings, 
and Landor was much in both households. "He made us a 
long visit," wrote Mrs. Story, "and was our honored 
and cherished guest. His courtesy and high breeding never 
failed him." Landor would often be seen astir in the early 
dawn, sitting under the olive trees in the garden, writing 
Latin verses. To Kate Field, who had become a great 
favorite with the Brownings, Mr. Browning wrote with 
some bit of verse of Landor's: 

Siena, Villa Alberti, July 18. 

Dear Miss Field: — I have only a minute to say that 
Mr. Landor wrote these really pretty lines in your honor the 
other day, — you remember on what circumstances they turn. 
I know somebody who is ready to versify to double the extent 
at the same cost to you, and do his best, too, and you also know. 

Yours Affectionately Ever, 

R. B. 

The servant waits for this and stops the expansion of soul! 

P. S. ... What do you mean by pretending that we are 
not the obliged, the grateful people? Your stay had made us 



1 84 THE BROWNINGS 

so happy, come and make us happy again, says (or would say 
were she not asleep) my wife, and yours also, — 

R. B. 

Of Lander, while they were in Siena, Mrs. Browning wrote 
to a friend that Robert always said he owed more to him 
than any other contemporary, and that Landor's genius 
insured him the gratitude of all artists. In these idyllic days 
Mr. Story's young daughter, Edith, (now the Marchesa 
Peruzzi di Medici, of Florence,) had a birthday, which the 
poetic group all united to celebrate. In honor of the occa- 
sion Landor not only wrote a Latin poem for the charming 
girl, but he appeared in a wonderful flowered waistcoat, 
one that dated back to the days of Lady Blessington, to 
the amusement of all the group. From Isa Blagden, who 
remained in her villa on Bellosguardo, came almost daily 
letters to Mrs. Browning, who constantly gained strength 
in the life-giving air of Siena, where they looked afar 
over a panorama of purple hills, with scarlet sunsets 
flaming in the west, the wind blowing nearly every 
day, as now. The Cave of the Winds, as celebrated by 
Virgil, might well have been located in Siena. 

Mrs. Browning and Mrs. Story would go back and forth 
to visit each other, mounted on donkeys, their husbands 
walking beside, as they had done in the Arcadian days at 
Bagni di Lucca. Odo Russell passed two days with the 
Brownings on his way from Rome to London, to their great 
enjoyment. Landor's health and peace of mind became so 
far restored that he was able to "write awful Latin alcaics." 
Penini, happy in his great friends, the Story children, 
Julian, Waldo, and Edith, and hardly less so with the con- 
tadini, whom he helped to herd the sheep and drive in the 
grape-carts, galloped through lanes on his own pony, in- 
sisted on reading to his contadini from the poems of Dall' 
Ongaro, and grew apace in happiness and stature. For 



THEIR LIFE AND ART " 185 

two hours every day his father taught him music, and the 
lad already played Beethoven sonatas, and music of 
difficult execution from German composers. 

The Brownings and the Storys passed many evenings 
together, "sitting on the lawn under the ilexes and the 
cypresses, with tea and talk, until the moon had made the 
circuit of the quarter of the sky." Mrs. Browning's 
health grew better, and Story writes to Charles EHot Norton 
that "Browning is in good spirits about her, and Pen is 
well, and as I write," he continues, "I hear him laugh- 
ing and playing with my boys and Edith on the terrace 
below." 

It was late in October before they returned to Florence, 
and then only for a sojourn of six weeks before going to 
Rome for the winter. The Siena summer had been a period 
of unalloyed delight to Mrs. Browning, whose health was 
much improved, and not the least of the happiness of both 
had been due to the congenial companionship of the 
Storys, and to their dehcate courtesies, which Mrs. Brown- 
ing wrote to Mrs. Jameson that she could never forget. 
Browning wrote to Mrs. Story saying to her that she surely 
did not need to be told how entirely they owed "the de- 
hghtful summer" to her own and Mr. Story's kindness. 
"Ba is hardly so well," he adds, "as when she was let thrive 
in that dear old villa and the pleasant country it hardly 
shut out." 

Mrs. Browning's small book, the "Poems before Con- 
gress," only eight in all, was published in this early spring 
of i860, and met with no cheering reception. She felt this 
keenly, but said, "If I were ambitious of anything it would 
be to be wronged where, for instance, Cavour is wronged." 
With Mrs. Browning a political question was equally a 
moral question. Her devotion to Italy, and faith in the 
regeneration of the country, were vital matters to her. She 
was deeply touched by the American attitude toward her 



i86 THE BROWNINGS 

poem, "A Curse for a Nation," for the Americans, she 
noted, rendered thanks to the reprover of ill deeds, ''under- 
standing the pure love of the motive." These very "Poems 
before Congress" brought to her praises, and the offer of 
high prices as well, and of this nation she said it was 
generous. 

A letter from Robert Browning written to Kate Field, 
who was then in Florence with Miss Blagden, and which 
has never before been pubUshed, is as follows: 

Rome, Via del Tritone, 28, 
March 29th, i860. 

Dear Miss Field, — Do you really care to have the Uttle 
photograph? Here it is with all my heart. I wonder I dare 
be so frank this morning, however, for a note just rec'd from 
Isa mentions an instance of your acuteness, that strikes me with 
a certain awe. " Kate," she says, " persists that the ' Curse for 
a Nation ' is for America, and not England." You persist, 
do you? No doubt against the combined intelligence of our 
friends who show such hunger and thirst for a new poem of 
Ba's — and, when they get it, digest the same as you see. 
*' Write a nation's curse for me," quoth the antislavery so- 
ciety five years ago, "and send it over the Western sea." 
" Not so," replied poor little Ba, "for my heart is sore for 
my own lands' sins, which are thus and thus, — what curse as- 
sign to another land when heavy for the sins of mine? " " Write 
it for that very reason," rejoined Ba's cheerer, " because thou 
hast strength to see and hate a foul thing done within thy gate," 
and so, after a little more dallying, she wrote and sent over the 
Western seas what all may read, but it appears only Kate Field, 
out of all Florence, can understand. It seems incredible. How 
did you find out, beside, the meaning of all these puzzling pas- 
sages which I quote in the exact words of the poem? In short, 
you are not only the delightful Kate Field which I always knew 
you to be, but the sole understander of Ba in all Florence. I 
can't get over it. . . . 

Browning, the husband, means to try increasingly and some- 
what intelligibly to explain to all his intimates at Florence, 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 187 

with the sole exception of Kate Field; to whose comprehension 
he will rather endeavor to rise, than to stoop, henceforth. And 
so, with true love from Ba to Kate Field, and our united expla- 
nation to all other friends, that the subject matter of the present 
letter is by no means the annexation of Savoy and Nice, she 
will believe me, 

Hers very faithfully 

Robert Browning. 

To Kate Field Mrs. Browning wrote, the letter undated, 
but evidently about this time, apparently in reply to some 
request of Miss Field's to be permitted to write about them 
for publication: 

My Dear Kate, — I can't put a seal on your lips when I 
know them to be so brave and true. Take out your license, 
then, to name me as you please, only remembering, dear, that 
even kind words are not always best spoken. Here is the per- 
mission, then, to say nothing about your friends except that 
they are your friends, which they will always be glad to have 
said and believed. I had a letter from America to-day, from 
somebody who, hearing I was in ill health, desired to inform me 
that he would n't weep for me, were it not for Robert Browning 
and Penini! No, don't repeat that. It was kindly meant, and 
you are better, my dear Kate, and happier, and we are all 
thanking God for Italy. Love us here a little, and believe that 
we all love and think of you. 

Yours ever affectionately, 

E. B. B. 

The American appreciation of Mrs. Browning constantly 
increased, and editors offered her an hundred dollars each 
for any poem, long or short, that might pass through their 
publications on its way to final destiny. 

Theodore Parker had passed that winter in Rome, and 
Mrs. Browning felt that he was ''high and noble." Early 
in May he left for Florence, where his death occurred before 
the return of the Brownings. 



i88 THE BROWNINGS 

The education of Penini during these months was con- 
ducted by an old Abbe, who was also the instructor of Mr. 
Story's only daughter, Edith, and the two often shared 
their lessons, the lad going to Palazzo Barberini to join 
Miss Edith in this pursuit of knowledge. Certain tradi- 
tions of the venerable Abbe have drifted down the years, 
indicating that his breviary and meditations on ecclesiastical 
problems did not exclusively occupy his mind, for the pres- 
ent Marchesa Peruzzi has more than one laughing remi- 
niscence of this saintly father, who at one time challenged 
his pupil to hop around the large table on one foot. The 
hilarity of the festivity was not lessened when the Rev- 
erendo himself joined in the froHc, his robes flapping around 
him, as they all contributed to the merriment. The Mar- 
chesa has many a dainty note written to her by Penini's 
mother. Once it is as Pen's amanuensis that she serves, 
praying the loan of a " ' Family Robinson,' by Mayne Reid," 
to solace the boy in some indisposition. "I doubt the con- 
nection between Mayne Reid and Robinson," says Mrs. 
Browning, "but speak as I am bidden." And another 
note was to tell "Dearest Edith" that Pen's papa wanted 
him for his music, and that there were lessons, beside; and 
"thank dear Edith for her goodness," and "another day, 
with less obstacles." The intercourse between the Brown- 
ings and the Storys was always so full of mutual compre- 
hension and perfect sympathy and delicate, lovely recog- 
nition on both sides, that no life of either the sculptor 
or the wedded poets could be presented that did not in- 
clude these constant amenities of familiar, affectionate 
intercourse. 

Many English friends of the Brownings came and went 
that winter, and among others was Lady Annabella Noel, 
a granddaughter of Lord Byron, and a great admirer of 
Mr. Browning. A new acquaintance of the Brownings 
was Lady Marion Alford, a daughter of the Earl of 




B £ 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 189 

Northampton, "very eager about literature, and art, and 
Robert," laughed Mrs. Browning, and Lady Marion 
and "Hatty" (Miss Hosmer) were, it seems, mutually 
captivated. 

Some of the English artists came to Rome, Burne- Jones 
and Val Prinsep among them, and they with Browning 
wandered about the classic byways of the city and drove 
to see the Coliseum by moonlight. 

In June the Brownings left Rome, by way of Orvieto 
and Chiusi. They crossed that dead, mystic Campagna 
that flows, like a sea, all around Rome — a sea of silence 
and mystery; with its splendid ruins of the old aqueducts 
and tombs, its vast stretches of space that were all aglow, 
in those June days, with scarlet poppies. They stopped 
one night at Viterbo, the Httle city made famous since 
those days by Richard Bagot's tragic novel, "Temptation," 
and where the convent is interesting from its associations 
with Vittoria Colonna, who in 1541 made here a retreat 
for meditation and prayer. 

In Orvieto they rested for a day and night, and Mrs. 
Browning was able to go with her husband into the mar- 
velous cathedral, with its "jeweled and golden facade" 
and its aerial Gothic construction. Mr. Browning, with 
his little son, drove over to the wild, curious town of 
Bagnorgio, which, though near Orvieto, is very Httle known. 
But this was the birthplace of Giovanni da Fidenza, the 
''Seraphic Doctor," who was canonized as St. Buonaven- 
tura, from the exclamation of San Francesco, who, on 
awakening from a dream communion with Giovanni da 
Fidenza, exclaimed, "0 buona ventura!" Dante introduces 
this saint into the Divina Commedia, as chanting the 
praises of San Domenico in Paradise: 

"lo san vita di Bonaventura 
Du Bagnorgio, che ne grandi uffici, 
Sempre posposi la sinistra cura." 



iQO THE BROWNINGS 

Bagnorgio is, indeed, the heart of poetic legend and sacred 
story, but it is so inaccessible, perched on its high hill, 
with deep chasms, evidently the work of earthquakes, 
separating it from the route of travel, that from a distance 
it seems impossible that any conveyance save an airship 
could ever reach the town. 

By either route, through the Umbrian region, by way 
of Assisi and Perugia, or by way of Orvieto and Siena, the 
journey between Rome and Florence is as beautiful as a 
dream. The Brownings paused for one night's rest at Lake 
Thrasymene, the scenes of the battlefield of Hannibal and 
Flaminius, with the town on a height overlooking the 
lake. "Beautiful scenery, interesting pictures and tombs," 
said Mrs. Browning of this journey, "but a fatiguing ex- 
perience." She confessed to not feeling as strong as she 
had the previous summer, but still they were planning 
their villeggiatura in Siena, taking the same villa they had 
occupied the previous season, where Penini should keep 
tryst with the old Abbe, who was to come with the Storys 
and with his Latin. 

They found Landor well and fairly amenable to the new 
conditions of his life. Domiciled with Isa Blagden was 
Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who was drawn to Florence 
that spring largely to meet Theodore Parker, with whom 
she had long corresponded. Mr. and Mrs. Lewes (George 
Eliot) were in Florence that spring of i860, the great nov- 
elist making her studies for "Romola." They were the 
guests of the Thomas Adolphus TroUopes. 

Landor, too, came frequently to take tea with Miss 
Blagden and Miss Cobbe on their terrace, and discuss art 
with Browning. Dall' Ongaro and Thomas Adolphus 
TroUope were frequently among the little coterie. His 
visits to Casa Guidi and his talks with Mrs. Browning 
were among the most treasured experiences of Mr. Trollope. 
"I was conscious, even then," he afterward wrote in his 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 191 

reminiscences of this lovely Florentine life, "of coming 
away from Casa Guidi a better man, with higher views 
and aims. The effect was not produced by any talk of the 
nature of preaching, but simply by the perception and ap- 
preciation of what Elizabeth Browning was: of the purity 
of the spiritual atmosphere in which she habitually dwelt." 

Miss Hosmer came, too, that spring, as the guest of 
Miss Blagden, and she of ten walked down the hill to break- 
fast with her friends in Casa Guidi. Browning, who was 
fond of an early walk, sometimes went out to meet her, 
and on one occasion they had an escapade which "Hatty" 
related afterward with great glee. It was on one of these 
morning encounters that Miss Hosmer confessed to the 
poet that the one longing of her soul was to ride behind 
Caretta, the donkey, and Browning replied that nothing 
could be easier, as Girolamo, Caretta's owner, was the 
purveyor of vegetables to Casa Guidi, and that they would 
appropriate his cart for a turn up Poggia Imperiale. "Z)i 
gustihus non,'' began Browning. "Better let go Latin and 
hold on to the cart," sagely advised the young sculptor. 
In the midst of their disasters from the surprising actions 
of Caretta, they met her owner. " Dio mio," exclaimed Gi- 
rolamo, " it is Signor Browning. San Antonio ! " Girolamo 
launched forth into an enumeration of all the diabolical pow- 
ers possessed by Caretta, and called on all the saints to wit- 
ness that she was a disgrace to nature. Meantime the poet, 
the sculptor, the vegetables, and the donkey were largely 
combined into one hopeless mass, and Browning's narra- 
tion and re-enactment of the tragedy, after they reached 
Casa Guidi, threw Mrs. Browning into peals of laughter. 

Again the Brownings sought their favorite Siena, where 
Miss Blagden joined them, finding a rude stone villino, of 
two or three rooms only, the home of some contadini, 
within fifteen minutes' walk of Mrs. Browning, and taking 
it to be near her friend. But for the serious illness of Mrs. 



192 THE BROWNINGS 

Browning's sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook) the sum- 
mer would have been all balm and sunshine. The Storys 
were very near, and Mr. Landor had been comfortably 
housed not far from his friends, who gave the aged scholar 
the companionship he best loved. Browning took long 
rides on horseback, exploring all the romantic regions 
around Siena, such rides that he might almost have ex- 
claimed with his own hero, the Grand Duke Ferdinand, — 

"For I ride — what should I do but ride?" 

Penini, too, galloped through the lanes on his pony, his 
curls flying in the wind, and read Latin with the old Abbe. 
The lessons under this genial tutor were again shared with 
Miss Edith Story, one of whose earliest childish recollec- 
tions is of sitting on a low hassock, leaning against Mrs. 
Browning, while Penini sat on the other side, and his 
mother talked with both the children. Mr, Story's two 
sons, the future painter and sculptor respectively, were less 
interested at this time in canvas and clay than they were 
in their pranks and sports. The Storys and Brownings, 
Miss Blagden and Landor, all loaned each other their books 
and newspapers, and discussed the news and literature of 
the day. The poet was much occupied in modeling, and 
passed long mornings in Mr. Story's improvised studio, 
where he copied two busts, the "Young Augustus " and the 
"Psyche," with notable success. 

In the October of that year both the Brownings and 
the Storys returned to Rome, the poets finding a new apart- 
ment in the Via Felice. Mrs. Browning's sister Henrietta 
died that autumn, and in her grief she said that one of the 
first things that did her good was a letter from Mrs. Stowe. 
She notes her feeling that "how mere a line it is to overstep 
between the living and the dead." Her spiritual insight 
never failed her, and of herself she said: "I wish to live just 
so long, and no longer, than to grow in the spirit." 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 193 

In the days of inevitable sadness after her sister's death, 
whatever the consolations and reassurances of faith and 
philosophy, Mrs. Browning wrote to a friend of the tender 
way in which her husband shielded her, and "for the rest," 
she said, "I ought to have comfort, for I believe that love, 
in its most human relations, is an eternal thing." She 
added: "One must hve; and the only way is to look away 
from one's self into the larger and higher circle of life in 
which the merely personal grief or joy forgets itself." 

Penini and his friend. Miss Edith, continued their studies 
under the old Abbe; his mother heard him read a little 
German daily, and his father "sees to his music, and the 
getting up of arithmetic," noted Mrs. Browning. The 
lad rode on his pony over Monte Pincio, and occasion- 
ally cantered out on the Campagna with his father. But 
Mrs. Browning had come to know that her stay on earth was 
to be very brief, and to her dear Isa she wrote that for the 
first time she had pain in looking into her little son's face 
— "which you will understand," she adds, but to her hus- 
band she did not speak of this premonition. She urged him 
to go out into the great world, for Rome was socially re- 
splendent that winter. Among other notable festivities 
there was a great ball given by Mrs. Hooker, where princes 
and cardinals were present, and where the old Roman 
custom of attending the princes of the church up and down 
the grand staircase with flaming torches was observed. 
The beautiful Princess Rospoli was a guest that night, 
appearing in the tri-color. Commenting on the Civil War 
that was threatening America, Mrs. Browning said she 
"believed the unity of the country should be asserted with 
a strong hand." 

Val Prinsep, in Rome that winter, was impressed by Mr. 
Browning into the long walks in which they both delighted, 
and they traversed Rome on both sides the Tiber. The 
poet was not writing regularly in those days, though his 



194 THE BROWNINGS 

wife "gently wrangled" with him to give more attention 
to his art, and held before him the alluring example of the 
Laureate who shut himself up daily for prescribed work. 
Browning had "an enormous superfluity of vital energy," 
which he had to work off in long walks, in modeling, and 
in conversations. "I wanted his poems done this winter 
very much," said Mrs. Browning; "and here was a bright 
room with three windows consecrated to use. . . . There 
has been little poetry done since last winter." But in later 
years Browning became one of the most regular of workers, 
and considered that day lost on which he had not written 
at least some lines of poetry. At this time the poet was 
fascinated by his modeling. "Nothing but clay does he 
care for, poor, lost soul," laughed Mrs. Browning. Her 
"Hatty" ran in one day with a sketch of a charming design 
for a fountain for Lady Marion Alford. "The imagination 
is unfolding its wings in Hatty," said Mrs. Browning. 

In days when Mrs. Browning felt able to receive visitors, 
there were many to avail themselves of the privilege. On 
one day came Lady Juliana Knox, bringing Miss Sewell 
(Amy Herbert); and M. Carl Grun, a friend of the poet, 
Dair Ongaro, came with a letter from the latter, who wished 
to translate into ItaHan some of the poems of Mrs. Brown- 
ing. Lady Juliana had that day been presented to the 
Holy Father, and she related to Mrs. Browning how deeply 
touched she had been by his adding to the benediction he 
gave her, '^Priez pour le pape." 

Penini had a choice diversion in that the Duchesse de 
Grammont, of the French Embassy, gave a ^^ matinee 
d'enfants," to which he received a card, and went, resplen- 
dent in a crimson velvet blouse, and was presented to 
small Italian princes of the Colonna, the Doria, Piom- 
biono, and others, and played leap-frog with his titled 
companions. 

Mrs. Browning reads with eager interest a long speech 



THEIR LIFE AND ART . 195 

of their dear friend, Milsand, which filled seventeen columns 
of the Moniteur, a copy of which his French friend sent to 
Browning. 

The Brownings had planned to join the poet's father and 
sister in Paris that summer, but a severe attack of illness 
in which for a few days her life was despaired of made 
Mrs. Browning fear that she would be unable to take the 
journey. Characteristically, her only thought was for the 
others, never for herself, and she writes to Miss Browning 
how sad she is in the thought of her husband's not seeing 
his father, and "If it were possible for Robert to go with 
Pen," she continues, *'he should, but he wouldn't go 
without me." 

When she had sufficiently recovered to start for Florence, 
they set out on June 4, resting each night on the way, and 
reaching Siena four days later, where they lingered. From 
there Mr. Browning wrote to the Storys that they had 
traveled through exquisite scenery, and that Ba had borne 
the journey fairly well. But on arriving in Florence and 
opening their apartment again in Casa Guidi, it was ap- 
parent that the poet had decided rightly that there was to 
be no attempt made to visit Paris. During these closing 
days of Mrs. Browning's stay on earth, her constant aim 
was "to keep quiet, and try not to give cause for trouble 
on my account, to be patient and live on God's daily bread 
from day to day." 

"O beauty of holiness, 
Of seLf-forgetfulness, of lowliness!" 

It is difficult to read unmoved her last words written to 
Miss Sarianna Browning. "Don't fancy, dear," she said, 
"that this is the fault of my will," and she adds: 

"Robert always a little exaggerates the difficulties of travel- 
ing, and there 's no denying that I have less strength than is 
usual to me. . . . What does vex me is that the dearest nonno 



196 THE BROWNINGS 

should not see his Peni this year, and that you, dear, should be 
disappointed, on my account again. That 's hard on us all. 
We came home into a cloud here. I can scarcely command 
voice or hand to name Cavour. That great soul, which meditated 
and made Italy, has gone to the diviner country. If tears or 
blood could have saved him to us, he should have had mine. I 
feel yet as if I could scarcely comprehend the greatness of the 
vacancy." 

For a week previous to her transition to that diviner 
world in which she always dwelt, even on earth, she was 
unable to leave her couch; but she smilingly assured them 
each day that she was better, and in the last afternoon she 
received a visit from her beloved Isa, to whom she spoke 
with somewhat of her old fire of generous enthusiasm of the 
new Premier, who was devoted to the ideals of Cavour, 
and in whose influence she saw renewed hope for Italy. 
The Storys were then at Leghorn, having left Rome soon 
after the departure of the Brownings, and they were hesi- 
tating between Switzerland for the summer, or going again 
to Siena, where they and the Brownings might be together. 
The poet had been intending to meet the Storys at Leghorn 
that night, but he felt that he could not leave his wife, 
though with no prescience of the impending change. She 
was weak, but they talked over their summer plans, de- 
cided they would soon go to Siena, and agreed that they 
would give up Casa Guidi that year, and take a villa in 
Florence, instead. They were endeavoring to secure an 
apartment in Palazzo Barberini for the winter, the Storys 
being most anxious that they should be thus near together, 
and Mrs. Browning discussed with him the furnishing of 
the rooms in case they decided upon the Palazzo. Only 
that morning Mr. Lytton had called, and while Mrs. 
Browning did not see him, her husband talked with him 
nearly all the morning. Late in the evening she seemed a 
little wandering, but soon she slept, waking again about 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 197 

four, when they talked together, and she seemed to abnost 
pass into a state of ecstasy, expressing to him in the most 
ardent and tender words her love and her happiness. The 
glow of the luminous Florentine dawn brightened in the 
room, and with the words "It is beautiful!" she passed 
into that realm of life and light and loveliness in which 
she had always seemed to dwell. 

"And half we deemed she needed not 
The changing of her sphere, 
To give to heaven a Shining One, 
Who walked an angel here." 

Curiously, Miss Blagden had not slept at all that night. 
After her return from her visit to Mrs. Browning the pre- 
vious afternoon, "every trace of fatigue vanished," she 
wrote to a friend, "and all my faculties seemed singularly 
alert. I was unable to sleep, and sat writing letters till 
dawn, when a cabman came to tell me "La Signora della 
Casa Guidi e mortel^^ 

The Storys came immediately from Leghorn, and Miss 
Blagden took Edith Story and Penini to her villa. It was 
touching to see his little friend's endeavor to comfort the 
motherless boy. Mr. and Mrs. Story stayed with Browning 
in the rooms where everything spoke of her presence: the 
table, strewn with her letters and books; her little chair, a 
deep armchair of dark green velvet, which her son now holds 
sacred among his treasures, was drawn by the table just 
as she had left it, and in her portfolio was a half-finished 
letter to Madame Mario, speaking of Cavour, and her noble 
aspirations for Italy. 

In the late afternoon of July i, 1861, a group of English 
and American, with many Italian friends gathered about 
the little casket in the lovely cypress-shaded English ceme- 
tery of Florence, and as the sun was sinking below the 
purple hills it was tenderly laid away, while the amethyst 
mountains hid their faces in a misty veil. 



198 THE BROWNINGS 

"What would we give to our beloved? 
The hero's heart to be unmoved, 
The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep. 



God strikes a silence through you all, 
And giveth His beloved, sleep." 

Almost could the friends gathered there hear her poet- 
voice saying: 

"And friends, dear friends, when it shall be 
That this low breath is gone from me. 
And round my bier ye come to weep, 
Let One, most loving of you all, 
Say 'Not a tear must o'er her fall! 
He giveth His beloved, sleep.'" 



CHAPTER IX 
1861-1869 

"Think, when our one soul understands 

The great Word which makes all things new, 

When earth breaks up and heaven expands, 
How will the change strike me and you 

In the house not made with hands? 

"Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine. 

Your heart anticipate my heart, 
You must be just before, in fine. 

See and make me see, for your part. 
New depths of the divine!" 

The Completed Cycle — Letters to Friends — Browning's 
Devotion TO ms Son — Warwick Crescent — "Dramatis 
Person^e" — London Life — Death of the Poet's Father 
— Sarianna Browning — Oxford Honors the Poet — 
Death of Arabel Barrett — Audierne — "The Ring and 
THE Book." 

"The cycle is complete," said Browning to the Storys, as 
they all stood in those desolate rooms and gazed about. 
The salon was just as she had left it; the table covered with 
books and magazines, her Uttle chair drawn up to it, the 
long windows open to the terrace, and the faint chant of 
nuns, "made for midsummer nights," in San Felice, on 
the air. "Here we came fifteen years ago," continued Mr. 
Browning; "here Ba wrote her poems for Italy; here Pen 
was born; here we used to walk up and down this terrace 
on summer evenings." The poet lingered over many 
tender reminiscences, and after the Storys had taken leave, 



200 THE BROWNINGS 

he and his son yielded to the entreaties of Isa Blagden to 
stay with her in her villa on Bellosguardo during the time 
that he was preparing to leave Florence, which he never 
looked upon again. 

When all matters of detail were concluded, Miss Blagden, 
"perfect in all kindness," accompanied them to Paris, 
continuing her own journey to England, while Browning 
with his son, his father, and sister, proceeded to St. Enogat, 
near St. Malo, on the Normandy coast. Before Mrs. 
Browning's illness there had been a plan that all the 
Brownings and Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Stillman should pass 
the summer together at Fontainebleau. 

There was something about St. Enogat singularly restful 
to Browning, the sea, the solitude, the "unspoiled, fresh, 
and picturesque place," as he described it in a letter to 
Madame Du Quaire. The mystic enchantment of it wrought 
its spell, and Penini had his pony and was well and cheer- 
ful, and Browning realized too well that the change called 
death is but the passing through "the gates of new life," 
to be despairing in his sorrow. The spirit of one 

"... who never turned his back, but marched breast forward," 

breathes through all the letters that he wrote at this time 
to friends. "Don't fancy I am prostrated," he wrote to 
Leigh ton; "I have enough to do for myself and the boy, in 
carrying out her wishes." Somewhat later he expressed his 
wish that Mr. (later Sir Frederick) Leighton should design 
the memorial tomb, in that little Florence cemetery, for 
his wife; and the marble with only "E. B. B." inscribed on 
it, visited constantly by all travelers in Florence and 
rarely found without flowers, is the one Sir Frederick 
designed. 

In a letter to his boyhood's friend, Miss Haworth, 
Browning alluded to the future, when Penini would so 
need the help of "the wisdom, the genius, the piety" of 




m a 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 201 

his mother; and the poet adds: "I have had everything, 
and shall not forget." In reply to a letter of sympathy 
from Kate Field, he wrote: 

"Dear Friend, — God bless you for all your kindness which 
I shall never forget. I cannot write now except to say this, and 
beside, that I have had great comfort from the beginning." 

In the early autumn Browning took his son to London. 
The parting of the ways had come, and already he dimly 
perceived that the future would not copy fair the past. 
There are "reincarnations," in all practical effect, that are 
reaUzed in this life as well as, speculatively, hereafter; 
and his days of Italian terraces and oleander blooms, of 
enchanting hours on Bellosguardo, and lingerings in old 
palaces and galleries, and saunterings down narrow streets 
crowded with contadini, — these days were as entirely past 
as if he had been transported to another planet. 

"Not death; we do not call it so, 
Yet scarcely more with dying breath 
Do we forego; 
We pass an unseen line, 
And lo! another zone." 

The sea and the sands and the sky prefigured themselves 
in those days to Browning as all indistinguishably blended 
in an unreal world, from which the past had receded and 
on which the Future had not yet dawned. 

" Gray rocks and grayer sea, 
And surf along the shore; 
And in my heart a name 

My Kps shall speak no more." 

To Story he wrote with assurances of affection, but say- 
ing, "I can't speak about anything. I could, perhaps, 
if we were together, but to write freezes me." Miss Blag- 
den, in London, had taken rooms in Upper Westbourne 



202 THE BROWNINGS 

Terrace, and when in the late autumn Browning and his 
son went on to England, he took an apartment in Chi- 
chester Road, almost opposite the house where Miss 
Blagden was staying. But she had lived too long in en- 
chanted Florence to be content elsewhere, and she soon 
returned to her villa on the heights of Bellosguardo, from 
which the view is one of the most beautiful in all Europe. 
Browning soon took the house. No. 19 Warwick Crescent, 
which for nearly all the rest of his life continued to be his 
home. Here he was near Mrs. Browning's sister, Arabel 
Barrett, of whom he was very fond, and whose love for her 
sister's little son was most grateful to them both. Mr. 
Browning had his old tapestries, pictures, and furniture 
of old Florentine carving, some of it black with age, sent 
on from Casa Guidi, and he proceeded to transform a prim 
London house into an interior of singular charm. He lined 
the staircase with Italian pictures; books overflowed in all 
the rooms, and the glimpse of water in the canal near re- 
flected the green trees of the Crescent, giving the place a 
hint of sylvan Arcadias. There was the grand piano 
on which Penini practiced, and a tutor was engaged to 
prepare the lad for the university. The poet felt that this 
was the critical time to give his son "the English stamp," 
in "whatever it is good for," he added. But as a matter 
of fact the young Florentine had little affinity with Eng- 
lish ways. He was the child of poets; a linguist from his 
infancy, an omnivorous reader, and with marked talent for 
art, distinguishing himself later in both painting and sculp- 
ture, but he had little inclination for the exact sciences. 

In his London home Browning was soon again launched 
on a tide of work, — the dearest of which was in preparing 
the "Last Poems" of his wife for publication. He gave it 
a dedication to "Grateful Florence, and Tommaseo, her 
spokesman." He was also preparing a new edition of his 
own works to be issued in three volumes. The tutor he 



I THEIR LIFE AND ART 203 

had secured for his son was considered skillful in "gram- 
matical niceties," which, he said, "was much more to my 
mind than to Pen's." But he, as well as the boy, was 
homesick for Italy, and he wrote to Story that his particular 
reward would be "just to go back to Italy, to Rome"; and 
he adds: 

"Why should I not trust to you what I know you will keep 
to yourselves, but which will certainly amuse you as nothing 
else I could write is like to do? What good in our loving each 
other unless I do such a thing? So, O Story, O Emelyn, (dare 
I say, for the solemnity's sake?) and O Edie, the editorship 
has, under the circumstances, been offered to me: me! I really 
take it as a compliment because I am, by your indulgence, a 
bit of a poet, if you like, but a man of the world and able editor 
hardly!" 1 

The editorship in question was that of Cornhill, left vacant 
by the death of Thackeray. 

Browning was too great of spirit to sink into the recluse, 
and first beguiled into Rossetti's studio, he soon met Millais, 
and by degrees he responded again to friends and friend- 
ships, and life called to him with many voices. In the late 
summer of 1862 the poet and his son were at "green, pleas- 
ant little Cambo," and then at Biarritz. He was absorbed 
in Euripides; and the supreme work of his life, "The Ring 
and the Book," the Roman murder story, as he then called 
it, was constantly in his thought and beginning to take 
shape. The sudden and intense impression that the 
Franceschini tragedy had made on him, on first reading it, 
rushed back and held him as under a spell. But the 
"Dramatis Personae" and "In a Balcony" were to be 
completed before the inauguration of this great work. 

For more than four years the thrilling tragedy had lain 

* William Wetmore Story and his Friends. Boston: The Houghton- 
Mifflin Co. 



204 THE BROWNINGS 

in his mind, impressing that subconscious realm of mental 
action where all great work in art acquires its creative vital- 
ity. It is said that episodes of crime had a great fascination 
for Browning, pbre^ who would write out long imaginary- 
conversations regarding the facts, representing various 
persons in discussion, the individual views of each being 
brought out. The analogy of this to the treatment of the 
Franceschini tragedy in his son's great poem is rather 
interesting to contemplate. With the poet it was less 
dramatic interest in the crime, per se, than it was that the 
complexities of crime afforded the basis from which to 
work out his central and controlHng purpose, his abiding 
and profound conviction that life here is simply the experi- 
mental and preparatory stage for the life to come; that all 
its events, even its lapses from the right, its fall into terrible 
evil, are — 

" Machinery just meant 
To give thy soul its bent," 

a part of the mechanism to "try the soul's stuff on"; that 
man lives in an environment of spiritual influences which 
act upon him in just that degree to which he can recognize 
and respond to them; and that he must sometimes learn 
the ineffable blessedness of the right through tragic ex- 
periences of the wrong. In the very realities of man's 
imperfection Browning sees his possibiHties of 

"Progress, man's distinctive work alone." 

When Browning asks: 

"And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence 
For the fullness of the days? . . ." 

he condenses in these Hnes his philosophy of Hfe. 

Many of the poems appearing in the "Dramatis Per- 
sonae" had already been written: " Gold Hair" and "James 
Lee's Wife" at Pornic, and others at green Cambo. In 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 205 

the splendor and power of "Abt Vogler," "Rabbi Ben 
Ezra," and "A Death in the Desert," the poet expressed a 
philosophy that again suggests his intuitive agreement 
with the Hegehan. "Rabbi Ben Ezra" holds in absolute 
solution the Vedanta philosophy. To the question as to 
what all this enigma of life means, the poet answers: 

"Thence shall I pass, approved 
A man, for aye removed 
From the developed brute; a god though in the germ. 



He fixed thee 'mid this dance 

Of plastic circumstance, 

This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest. " 

How keen the sense of humor and of the sharp contrasts of 
life in "Era Lippo Lippi," and what power of character 
analysis. The intellectual vigor and the keen insight into 
the play of mental action in "Bishop Blougram's Apology " 
— a poem that occasioned great discussion on its appear- 
ance (from a real or fancied resemblance of the "Bishop" 
to Cardinal Wiseman) — are almost unsurpassed in poetic 
literature. Many of the poems in the "Dramatis Personae " 
are aglow with the romance of life, as in the " Eurydice to 
Orpheus," and "A Face," which refers to Emily Patmore. 
There are studio traces as well in these, and in the "Deaf 
and Dumb," suggested by a group of Woolner. The crown- 
ing power of all is revealed in the noble faith and the ex- 
quisite tenderness of "Prospice," especially in those closing 
lines when all of fear and pain and darkness and cold, — 

"Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, 
Then a light, then thy breast, 
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, 
And with God be the rest!" 

The references to his wife in this poem, in the enthralling 
"One Word More," and in the dedication to "The Ring 



2o6 THE BROWNINGS 

and the Book," as well as those to be divined in his char- 
acter drawing of "Pompilia," are incomparable in their 
impressiveness and beauty, and must live so long as poetry 
is enshrined in life. The vital drama, the splendor of 
movement, the color, the impassioned exaltation of feeling, 
the pictorial vividness that are in these poems grouped 
under "Dramatic Romances" and "Dramatis Personee," 
give them claim to the first rank in the poet's creations. 
Curiously, during this period, the change in Browning's 
habits of work, which his wife used to urge upon him, 
seemed to gradually take possession of him, so that he 
came to count that day lost in which he had not written 
some lines of poetry. Did he, perchance in dreams, catch 
something of "the rusthng of her vesture" that influenced 
his mind to the change? To Elizabeth Browning poetry 
was not only a serious calUng, but its "own exceeding 
great reward," always. 

Another change came to Browning, which redeemed him 
from the growing tendency to become a recluse, and made 
him a familiar figure in the great world. He seemed to be- 
come aware that there was something morbid and unworthy 
in the avoidance of the world of men and women. Brown- 
ing's divinely commissioned work had to do with life, in 
its most absolute actualities as well as its great spiritual 
realities, because the life eternal in its nature was the theme 
on which he played his poetic variations, and no revelation 
of human nature came amiss to him. 

He had already supervised the publication of Mrs. 
Browning's essay on "The Greek Christian Poets" and 
"The Book of the Poets," and "nothing," he said, "that 
ought to be published, shall be kept back." He had also 
lent Story considerable assistance in arranging with Black- 
wood for the serial publication of '* Roba di Roma." 

For two or three summers Browning with his father, his 
sister, and his son, passed the summers at St. Marie, near 



I 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 207 

Pornic, from where in the August of 1863 he wrote to Leigh- 
ton that he was Hving on fruit and milk, and that each day 
he completed some work, read a little with Pen, and some- 
what more by himself. St. Marie was a "wild little place" 
in Brittany, on the very edge of the sea, a hamlet of hardly 
more than a dozen houses, of which the Brownings had the 
privilege of occupying that of the mayor, whose chief at- 
traction, apparently, was that, though bare, it was clean. 
The poet liked it all, and it was there that he wrote "In 
the Doorway" in "James Lee's Wife," with the sea, the 
field, and the fig-tree visible from his window. 

In the late summer the Brownings are all again at St. 
Marie in Brittany, and the poet writes to Isa Blagden that 
he supposes what she "calls fame within these four years" 
has come somewhat from his going about and showing 
himself alive, "but," he adds, "I was in London from the 
time that I published 'Paracelsus' till I ended the writing 
of plays with 'Luria,' — and I used to go out then, and see 
far more of merely hterary people, critics, etc., than I do 
now, — but what came of it?" If in the lines following 
there is a hint of sadness, who can blame him? 

During this summer he revised "Sordello" for re-publi- 
cation, not, however, as he had once contemplated, making 
in it any significant changes. In the dedication to his friend 
Milsand, he incorporated so clear an exposition of his idea 
in the poem that this dedication will always be read with 
special interest. In London again the next winter, Brown- 
ing wrote to Isa Blagden that he "felt comfort in doing 
the best he could with the object of his life, — poetry. I 
hope to do much more yet," he continued; "and that the 
flower of it will be put into Her hand somehow." 

The London spring found the poet much engaged, taking 
his son to studios, and to the Royal Academy, to concerts, 
and for long walks, and in a letter to Kate Field not here- 
tofore published is indicated something of the general trend 
of the days: 



2o8 THE BROWNINGS 

London, 19, Warwick Crescent, 
Upper Westbourne Terrace, May 5 th, 1864. 

Dear Kate Field, (so let me call you, please, in regard to 
old times when I might have done it, and did not,) I know well 
enough that there is great stupidity in this way of mine, this 
putting off a thing because I hope to compass some other thing, 
as here, for had you not asked for some photographs which I 
supposed I could soon find time and inclination to get, I should 
have thanked you at once; as I do now, indeed, and with all my 
heart, but the review article is wavering and indistinct in my 
mind now, and though it is inside a drawer of this table where 
I write, I cannot bring myself to look at it again, — not from 
a motive which is disparaging to you, as I am sure you under- 
stand; the general impression is enough for me, also, if you 
care in the least how I feel toward you. The boy has certainly 
the likeness to which you refer, and an absolute sameness, 
almost, in feature as well as in look, with certain old portraits 
of hers, — here, older and younger; there is not a trace of me 
in him, thank God! I know that dear, teasing Isa, and how she 
won't answer your questions, but sometimes, for compensation, 
she tells you what you never asked for, and though I always, or 
very often, ask about you, yet I think it may have been in reply 
to curiosity about the price of Italian stock, that she lately 
described to me a photograph of you, yourself, and how you 
were: what? even that's over. And moreover, how you were 
your old self with additions, which, to be sure, I don't require. 

Give my true regard to your mother, and thank her for her 
goodness in understanding me. But I write only to have a 
pleasant chat with you, in a balcony, looking for fire-flies in the 
garden, wider between us than the slanting Pitti fagade, now 
that it 's warm and Maylike in Florence. 

Always yours, 

Robert Browning. 



Mr. Browning had now begun to think of placing his 
son, who had passed his sixteenth birthday, in Oxford. 
In quest of this desire the poet sought the acquaintance of 




Kate Field 
From a portrait painted by Elihu ^'edd^r, Florence, 1860. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 



209 



Dr. Jowett, afterward Master of Balliol College. This 
initiated a friendship between Browning and Jowett that 
lasted all the poet's life, and that has insured to Balliol 
many priceless treasures of association with both Robert 
and Elizabeth Browning. Up to that time Jowett had not 
been an admirer of Browning's poetry. But his keen inter- 
est in the theme then engaging Browning was aroused, and 
he wrote to a friend: 

"I thought I was getting too old to make new friends, but 
I behave that I have made one, — Mr. Browning, the poet, 
who has been staying with me during the past few days. It is 
impossible to speak without enthusiasm of his open, generous 
natvire, and his great ability and knowledge. I had no idea that 
there was a perfectly sensible poet in the world, entirely free 
from vanity, jealousy, or any other Httleness, and thinking no 
more of himself than if he were an ordinary man. His great 
energy is very remarkable, as is his determination to make the 
most of the remainder of life. Of personal objects he seems to 
have none, except the education of his son, in which I hope in 
some degree to help him." ^ 

After returning to London, Browning writes to Tenny- 
son, in thanks for a book received from the Laureate : ^ 

19, Warwick Crescent, W., Oct. 10, 1865. 

My Dear Tennyson, — When I came back last year 
from my holiday I found a gift from you, a book; this time I 
find only the blue and gold thing which, such as it is, I send you, 
you are to take from me. I could not even put in what I pleased 
but I have said all about it in the word or two of preface, as also 
that I beg leave to stick the bunch in your buttonhole. May I 
beg that Mrs. Tennyson will kindly remember me? 

Ever Aflfectionately Yours, 

Robert Browning. 

1 Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett. London: John Murray. 

* Alfred Lord Tennyson. London and New York: The Macmillan Co. 



2IO THE BROWNINGS 

Tennyson wrote in reply that the nosegay was very wel- 
come. "I stick it in my buttonhole . . . and feel 's 

cork heels added to my boots," he added. 

Volumes of selections from the poems of both Browning 
and his wife were now being demanded for the "Golden 
Treasury"; and to Miss Blagden Browning says further 
that he will certainly do the utmost to make the most of 
himself before he dies, "for one reason that I may help 
Pen the better." 

Browning compUes with his pubUsher's request to 
prepare a new selection of his wife's poems. "How I have 
done it, I can hardly say," he noted, "but it is one dear 
dehght that the work of her goes on more efifectually than 
ever — her books are more and more read," — and a 
new edition of her "Aurora Leigh" was exhausted within 
a few months. 

The winter was a very full and engaging one. On one 
evening he dined at the deanery of St. Paul's, Sir John 
Lubbock and Tennyson being also guests, but the Stanleys, 
who were invited, were not present. At another dinner the 
poets met, Tennyson recording: "Mr. Browning gave me 
an affectionate greeting after all these years," and Brown- 
ing writing to a friend: "... I have enjoyed nothing so 
much as a dinner last week with Tennyson, who with his 
wife and one son is staying in town for a few weeks, and 
she is just what she was and always will be, very sweet 
and dear: he seems to me better than ever. I met him 
at a large party . . . also at Carlyle's. ..." 

In May of 1866 Browning's father was in poor health, 
and on June 14 he died, at his home in Paris, his son hav- 
ing arrived three days before. Although nearly eighty- 
five years of age, the elder Browning had retained all his 
clearness of mind, and only just before he passed away 
he had responded to some question of his son regarding 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 211 

a disputed point in medieval history with "a regular 
book-full of notes and extracts." His son speaks of 
the aged man's "strange sweetness of soul," apparently 
a transmitted trait, for the poet shared it, and has left 
it in liberal heritage to his son, Robert Barrett Browning, 
the "Pen" of all these pages. Of his father the poet 
said: 

"He was worthy of being Ba's father, — out of the whole 
world, only he, so far as my experience goes. She loved him, 
and he said very recently, while gazing at her portrait, that 
only that pictiu-e had put into his head that there might be 
such a thing as the worship of the images of saints." 

Miss Browning came henceforth to live with her brother, 
and for the remainder of his life she was his constant 
companion. She was a woman of delightful qualities, — of 
poise, cheerfulness, of great intelligence and of liberal 
culture. She was a very discriminating reader, and was 
pecuharly gifted with that sympathetic comprehension 
that makes an ideal companionship. Her presence now 
transformed the London house into a home. 

The next summer they passed at Le Croisic, where 
Browning wrote "Herve Riel," in "the most delicious 
and peculiar old house," and he and his sister, both very 
fond of the open air, walked once to Guerande, the old 
capital of Bretagne, some nine miles from their house. 

Browning had received his first academic honors that 
summer, Oxford having conferred on him her degree of 
M.A. The next October Browning was made Honorary 
Fellow of Balliol College, a distinction that he greatly 
prized. 

During this summer Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks (later 
Bishop of Massachusetts) was in London, and visited 
Browning once or twice. To a Boston friend who asked 
for his impressions of the great poet, Dr. Brooks wrote :^ 

1 Life of Phillips Brooks. New York: E. P. Button and Co. 



212 THE BROWNINGS 

"... I can't say anything now except that he is one of the 
nicest people to pass an evening with in London. He is a clear- 
headed and particularly clear-eyed man of the world, devoted 
to society, one of the greatest diners-out in London, cordial and 
hearty, shakes your hand as if he were really glad to see you. 
... As to his talk it was n't 'Sordello,' and it was n't as fine 
as 'Paracelsus,' but nobody ever talked more nobly, truly, and 
cheerily than he. I went home and slept after hearing him as 
one does after a fresh starlight walk with a good cool breeze on 
his face." 

In 1863, on July 19, a little more than two years after 
the death of Mrs. Browning, Arabel Barrett had a dream, 
in which she was speaking with her sister Elizabeth, and 
asked, "When shall I be with you?" "Dearest, in five 
years," was the reply. She told this dream to Mr. Brown- 
ing, who recorded it at the time. In June of 1868 Miss 
Barrett died, the time lacking one month only of being 
the five years. "Only a coincidence, but noticeable," 
Mr. Browning wrote to Isa Blagden. But in the larger 
knowledge that we now have of the nature of life and the 
phenomena of sleep, that the ethereal body is temporarily 
released from the physical (sleep being the same as death, 
save that in the latter the magnetic cord is severed, and the 
separation is final) — in the light of this larger knowledge 
it is easy to realize that the two sisters actually met in 
the ethereal realm, and that the question was asked and 
answered according to Miss Barrett's impression. The 
event was sudden, its immediate cause being rheumatic 
affection of the heart, and she died in Browning's arms, 
as did his wife. Her companionship had been a great 
comfort to him, and Mr. Gosse notes that for many years 
after her death he could not bear to pass Delamere 
Terrace. 

The late summer of that year was devoted to traveling 
from Vannes about the coast, and they finally decided 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 



213 



on Audierne for a sojourn. "Sarianna and I have just 
returned from a four hours' walk," he writes to a friend 
from this place; but here, as everywhere, he was haunted 
by Florentine memories, and by intense longings for his 
vanished paradise. To Isa Blagden he wrote: 

*'Ifeel as if I should immensely like to glide along for a summer 
day through the streets and between the old stone walls, un- 
seen come and unheard go, — perhaps by some miracle I shall 
do so . . . Oh, me! to find myself some late sunshiny afternoon 
with my face turned toward Florence. . . ." 

While at Audierne, Browning put the final touches to 
the new six-volume edition of his works that was about 
to appear from the house of Smith, Elder, and Company, 
on the title-page of which he signs himself as M.A., Honor- 
ary Fellow of Balliol College. Mr. Nettleship's volume 
of essays on Browning's poems was published that season, 
indicating a strong interest in the poet; and another very 
gratifying experience to him was the interest in his work 
manifested by the undergraduates of both Oxford and 
Cambridge. Undoubtedly the pleasant glow of this ap- 
preciation stimulated his energy in the great poem on which 
he was now definitely at work, "The Ring and the Book." 
Publishers were making him offers for its publication, 
"the R. B. who for six months once did not sell a single 
copy of his poems," he exclaimed in a letter to a friend, 
to whom he announced that he should " ask two hundred 
pounds for the sheets to America, and get it!" with an 
evident conviction that this was a high price for his work. 
The increasing recognition of the poet was further indi- 
cated by a request from Tauchnitz for the volumes of 
selections which Browning dedicated to the Laureate in 
these graceful words: "To Alfred Tennyson. In Poetry 
— illustrious and consummate ; In Friendship — noble and 
sincere." 



214 THE BROWNINGS 

The publication of "The Ring and the Book" was the 
great literary event of 1869. Two numbers had ap- 
peared in the previous autumn, but when offered in its 
completeness the poem was found to embody the most 
remarkable interpretation of transfigured human life to 
to be found in all the literature of poetry. The fame of the 
poet rose to splendor. This work was the inauguration 
of an epoch, of a period from which his work was to be 
read, studied, discussed, to a degree that would have been 
incredible to him, had any Cassandra of previous years 
lifted the veil of the future. The great reviews united in 
a very choral pean of praise; the Fortnightly, the Quarterly, 
the Edinburgh Review, the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
and others were practically unanimous in their recognition 
of a work which was at once felt to be the very epitome 
of the art and life of Robert Browning, The poem is, 
indeed, a vast treasure into which the poet poured all his 
searching, relentless analysis of character, and grasp of 
motive; all his compassion, his sensitive susceptibility 
to human emotion; all his gift of brilliant movement; 
all his heroic enthusiasms, and his power of luminous 
perception. But all this wealth of feeling and thought 
had been passed through the crucible of his critical creation; 
it had been fused and recast by the alchemy of genius. He 
transmuted fact into truth. 

"Do you see this Ring? 

'T is Rome-work made to match 
(By Castellani's imitative craft) 
Etrurian circlets. . . . 



I fused my live soul and that inert stuff. 
Before attempting smithcraft. . . ." 



The "square old yellow book" which Browning had 
chanced upon in the market-place of San Lorenzo, in that 
June of i860, was not a volume, but a "lawyer's file of 




The Palazzo Riccardi, Florence, 
erected by michelozzo about i43s. 

" . . . . Riccardi where they lived 

His race " 

The Ring and the Book. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 215 

documents and pamphlets." In relating how he found 
the book Browning says, in the poem: 

"... I found this book, 
Gave a lira for it, eightpence English just, 
(Mark the predestination!) when a Hand, 
Always above my shoulder, pushed me once, 



Across a Square in Florence, crammed with booths, 
He stepped out on the narrow terrace, built 
"Over the street and opposite the church, 



Whence came the clear voice of the cloistered ones 
Chanting a chant made for midsummer nights — " 

and making his own the story. 

In 1908 Dr. Charles W. Hodell was enabled by the 
courtesy of Balliol College, to whom Browning left the 
"Old Yellow Book," to make a photographic reproduction 
of the original documents, to which Dr. Hodell added a 
complete and masterly translation, and a noble essay 
entitled "On the Making of a Great Poem," the most 
marvelous analysis and commentary on "The Ring and 
the Book" that has ever been produced. The photo- 
graphed pages of the original documents, the translation, 
and this essay were published by the Carnegie Institu- 
tion, in a large volume entitled "The Old Yellow Book." 
In his preface Professor Hodell records that he was drawn 
to the special study of this poem by Professor Hiram 
Corson, Litt.D., LL.D., to whom he reverently refers as 
"my Master." Of "The Ring and the Book" Dr. Hodell 
says: 

" In the wide range of the work of Robert Browning no single 
poem can rival 'The Ring and the Book,' in scope and mani- 
fold power. The subject had fallen to his hands at the very 
fulness of his maturity, by 'predestination,' as it seemed to him. 



2i6 THE BROWNINGS 

In the poem, as he planned his treatment, there was oppor- 
tunity for every phase of his pecuhar genius. ... so that 
the completed masterpiece becomes the macrocosm of his work. 
, . . Without doubt it may be held to be the greatest poetic 
work, in a long poem, of the nineteenth century. It is a drama 
of profound spiritual realities. 

' So write a book shall mean beyond the facts, 
Sufi&ce the eye, and save the soul beside.' 

Browning was the only important poet of the Victorian age 
who did not draw upon the Morte d' Arthur legends; and the 
rich mythology of the Greeks tempted him as little. The motive 
that always appealed to him most was that of the activity of 
the human spirit, its power to dominate all material barriers 
to transcend every temporary limit, by the very power of its 
own energy." 

In his historic researches Professor Hodell found reason 
to believe that the Pope, in "The Ring and the Book," 
was Stephen VI, and not VII; and writing to Robert 
Barrett Browning to inquire regarding this point, he re- 
ceived from the poet's son the following interesting letter, 
which, by Dr. Hodell's generous courtesy, is permitted 
to appear in this book. 

La Torre all' Antella, Florence, Jan. 6, 1904. 

My Dear Sir, — I wish I were able to give you the infor- 
mation you ask me for, but my father's books are in Venice, 
and I have not any here touching on the matter to refer to. 

If Pope Stephen was, as you say, the Sixth and not the 
Seventh, of course the mistake is obvious and perhaps attrib- 
utable to an unconscious slip of the memory, which with my 
father was not at its best in dates and figures. It is not likely 
that such an error should have appeared in any old work, such 
as he would have consulted; and certainly it was not caused 
by carelessness, for he was painstaking to a degree, and had a 
proper horror of blundering, which is the word he would have 
used. I can only account for such a mistake as this — which 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 217 

he would have been the first to pronounce unpardonable — by 
his absent-mindedness, his attention being at the moment ab- 
sorbed by something else. Absent-mindedness was one of his 
characteristics, over instances of which he used to laugh most 
heartily. My father's intention, I know, was to be scru- 
pulously accurate about the facts in this poem. I may tell you 
as an instance that, wishing to be sure that there was moonlight 
on a particular night, he got a distinguished mathematician 
to make the necessary calculation. The description of the find- 
ing of the book is without doubt true in every detail. Indeed, 
to this day the market at San Lorenzo is very much what it 
was then and as I can remember it. Not long ago, I myself 
bought an old volume there off a barrow. 

The "Yellow Book" was probably picked up in June of 
i860 before going to Rome for the winter — the last my father 
passed in Italy. As it had always been understood that the 
Book should be presented to Balliol, I went soon after my 
father's death to stay a few days with Jowett, and gave it to 
him. 

In the portrait that hangs in Balliol Hall I painted my 
father as he sat to me with the Book in his hands. 

Nothing wovdd have gratified him more than what you tell 
me about the interest with which his works are studied in Amer- 
ica, and I need not say how much pleasure this gives me. 
. BeUeve me with many thanks for your kind letter, 
Yours Very Sincerely, 

R. Barrett Browning. 

A very curious discovery was made in Rome, in the 
winter of 1900, by Signor Giorgi, the Librarian of the Royal 
Casanatense Library, in an ancient manuscript account 
of curious legal trials, among which were those of Beatrice 
Cenci, of Miguel de Molinos (in 1686), and of the trial 
and sentence of Guido Franceschini. The fact that taxes 
credulity in regard to this manuscript, of whose existence, 
even, no one in modern times had ever dreamed, is that 
the three points of view, as presented by Browning in the 



2i8 THE BROWNINGS 

"Half Rome," "The Other Half Rome," and "Tertium 
Quid," are in accord with those given in this strange 
document, which for more than a century had lain undis- 
turbed in the archives. 

In a little explanation regarding the significance of the 
closing lines of "The Ring and the Book," also kindly given 
by Robert Barrett Browning, it seems that his mother 
habitually wore a ring of Etruscan gold, wrought by Castel- 
lani, with the letters "A. E. I." on it; and that after her 
death the poet always wore it on his watch-chain, as does 
now his son. In the tablet placed on Casa Guidi to the 
memory of Mrs. Browning (the inscription of which was 
written by the Italian poet, Tommaseo) the source of the 
other allusion, of the linking Italy and England, is found. 
As the reader will recall, the lines run: 

"And save the soul! If this intent save mine, — 
If the rough ore be rounded to a ring, 
Render all duty which good ring should do, 
And, failing grace, succeed in guardianship, — 
Might mine but lie outside thine, Lyric Love, 
Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised) 
Linking our England to his Italy!" 

Dr. Corson especially notes Browning's opening invo- 
cation to his wife, praying her aid and benediction in the 
work he has undertaken. "This passage," says Dr. Corson, 
"has a remarkable movement, the unobtrusive but dis- 
tinctly felt alliteration contributing to the effect." 

"O lyric Love, half angel and half bird 
And all a wonder and a wild desire, — 
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, 
Took sanctuary within the holier blue." 



That Browning could never have created the character 
of Pompilia, save for that all-enfolding influence of the 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 219 

character of his wife, all the greater critics of "The Ring 
and the Book" agree. To Dr. Corson, Browning said of 
her: 

" I am not sorry, now, to have lived so long after she went 
away, but I confess to you that all my types of women were 
beautiful and blessed by my perfect knowledge of one woman's 
pure soul. Had I never known Elizabeth, I never could have 
written ' The Ring and the Book.' " 

Of Pompilia Dr. Hodell also says: 

" . . . But there is another influence in the creation of this 
ideal character beside that of the Madonna, it was the Madonna 
of his home, the mother of his own child, whose spiritual nature 
was as noteworthy as her intellect. And before this spiritual 
nature the poet bowed in humble reverence." 

Mrs. Orr, too, has written: 

"Mrs. Browning's spiritual presence was more than a pre- 
siding memory in the heart. I am convinced that it entered 
largely into the conception of Pompilia. 

"It takes, however, both the throbbing humanity of Balaus- 
tion and the saintly glory of Pompilia to express fully the nature 
of Elizabeth Barrett Browning as she appeared to her husband." 

Dr. Dowden, Brooke, Corson, Herford, Hodell, Chester- 
ton, and other authoritative critics allude to their recog- 
nition of Mrs. Browning in the character of Pompilia; 
and no reader of this immortal masterpiece of poetic art 
can ever fail to find his pulses thrilling with those incom- 
parable hnes, spoken in her last hour on earth by Pompilia: 

"O lover of my life, O soldier-saint, 
No work begun shall ever pause for death! 
Love will be helpful to me more and more 
I' the coming course, the new path I must tread — 



220 THE BROWNINGS 

Tell him that if I seem without him now, 
That's the world's insight! Oh, he understands! 

So let him wait God's instant men call years; 
Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul, 
Do out the duty! . . ." 

In the entire range of Browning's heroines Pompilia is 
the most exalted and beautiful character. 



CHAPTER X 
1869 -1880 

"I am strong in the spirit, deep-thoughted, dear-eyed; 
I could walk, step for step, with an angel beside, 
On the heaven-heights of truth. 
Oh, the soul keeps its youth 

" 'Twixt the heavens and the earth can a poet despond? 
O Life, O Beyond, 
Thou art strange, thou art sweet!" 

In Scotland with the Storys — Browning's Conversation — 
An Amusing Incident — With Milsand at St. Aubin's — 
"Red Cotton Night-cap Country" — Robert Barrett 
Browning's Gift for Art — Alfred Domett ("Waring") — 
"Balaustion's Adventure" — Browning and Tennyson — 
** Pacchiarotto " — Visits Jowett at Oxford — Declines 
Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews — "La Saisiaz" — Italy 
Revisited — The Dream of Asolo — "Ivanovitch" — Pride 
in ms Son's Success — "Dramatic Idylls." 

In the summer of 1869 the Storys, with their daughter, 
came from Rome and joined Browning with his sister and 
his son, for a hoHday in Scotland. They passed some time 
at a little inn on Loch Achnault, where Lady Marian AI- 
ford also came, and there are still vivid reminiscences of 
picnic lunches on the heather, and of readings by the poet 
from "The Ring and the Book." Chapters from "Rob 
Roy " also contributed to the enjoyment of evenings when 
the three ladies of the party — Mrs. Story, Lady Marian, 
and the lovely young girl, Miss Edith Story — were glad 
to draw a little nearer to the blazing fire which, even in 



222 THE BROWNINGS 

August, is not infrequently to be desired in Scotland. 
Lord Dufferin was also a friend of those days, and for the 
tower he had built at Clandeboye in the memory of his 
mother, Helen, Countess of Gifford, Browning wrote, soon 
after, his poem entitled "Helen's Tower." Mrs. Orr speaks 
of this poem as little known, and not included in his pub- 
lished works; but it is now to be found in all the complete 
editions of Browning. After this Arcadian sojourn Brown- 
ing and his son, with Miss Browning, were the guests of 
Lady Ashburton at Loch Luichart Lodge. 

For two or three years after the publication of "The 
Ring and the Book," Browning wrote little. The demands 
of friends and of an always enormous correspondence occu- 
pied much time; his son was growing into young manhood, 
and already manifesting his intense love of art, and his 
gifts as both painter and sculptor. 

Browning's conversation was always fascinating. It was 
full of glancing allusion, wit, sparkle, and with that con- 
stant undertone of significance that may be serious or gay, 
but which always lingers with a certain impressiveness to 
haunt the mind of the listener. Dr. Hiram Corson, who 
may perhaps be regarded as Browning's greatest inter- 
preter, speaks of one of his visits to the poet, in London, 
where the conversation turned from Shelley to Shake- 
speare. "He spoke with regret of the strangely limited 
reading of the Plays, even by those who believe themselves 
habitual and devoted readers," says Dr. Corson. 

"At luncheon," continues Dr. Corson, "his talk was, as usual 
with him, rapid and ofif-hand. He gave but a coup d'ceil to every 
subject that came up. In all subsequent talks with him, I 
never got the slightest impression from him of pride of intellect, 
though his was certainly one of the subtlest and most compre- 
hensive intellects of his time. He was absolutely free from it; 
was saved from it by his spiritual vitality. His intellectual 
and his spiritual nature jointly operated. Nor did he ever show 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 223 

to me any pride of authorship; never made any independent 
allusion to his poetry. One might have supposed that his 
poetry, great and extensive as it was, was a Trdpepyov, a by- 
work, with him. 

"I have no recollection of any saying of his, such as might 
be recorded for its wisdom or profundity. Never a brilliant 
thought crystallized in a single sentence. His talk was espe- 
cially characterized by its cordiality and rapid flow. The 
'member of society' and the poet seemed to be quite distinct. 

" One day when Mrs. Corson and I were lunching with him in 
Warwick Crescent," said Dr. Corson, "he told us a most amus- 
ing incident. On that morning Browning was particularly 'an 
embodied joy.' He told several good stories, one of which 
showed that the enigmatical character attributed to his poetry 
by some of his critics was to him a good joke. I have no doubt 
he must have enjoyed the Douglas Jerrold story, that Jerrold, 
in endeavoring to read 'Sordello,' thought he had lost his 
mind. 

"But to Browning's story. He said, 'I was visited by the 
Chinese minister and his attaches, without having been previ- 
ously informed of their coming. Before they entered, I had 
noticed from my window a crowd in the street, which had been 
attracted by the celestials in their national rigs, who were just 
then getting out of their carriages, I not knowing then what 
manner of visitors I was to have. Soon the interpreter an- 
nounced at the drawing-room door, "His Excellency, the Chinese 
Minister and his attaches." As they entered, the interpreter 
presented them, individually, first, of course, his Excellency, 
the Minister, and then the rest in order of rank. It was quite 
an impressive occasion. Recovering myself, I said to the in- 
terpreter: '' To what am I indebted for this great honor? " 
He replied: "You are a distinguished poet in your country, and 
so is his Excellency in his." We did obeisance to each other. 
I then asked the character of his Excellency's poetry. The in- 
terpreter replied, "Chiefly poetical enigmas." Grasping his 
Excellency's hand, I said, " I salute you as a brother.'" 

"Browning told this story while walking up and down the 
room. When he said, * I salute you as a brother,' he made the 
motion of a most hearty hand-shake." 



224 THE BROWNINGS 

Mrs. Arthur Bronson, than whom Mr. Browning never 
had a more sympathetic and all-comprehending friend, 
said that if she tried to recall Robert Browning's words 
it was as though she had talked to a being apart from other 
men. "My feeling may seem exaggerated," she smiled, 
"but it was only natural, when considering my vivid sense 
of his moral and intellectual greatness. His talk was not 
abstruse and intricate, like some of his writings. Far from 
it. As a rule he seemed rather to avoid deep and serious 
subjects. There was no loss, for everything he chose to say 
was well said. A familiar story, grave or gay, when clothed 
with his words, and accentuated by his expressive gestures 
and the mobility of his countenance, had all the charm of 
novelty; while a comic anecdote from his lips sparkled 
with wit, born of his own keen sense of humor. I found in 
him that most rare combination of a powerful personality 
united to a nature tenderly sympathetic." 

Another who knew him well perpetrated the mot that 
" Tennyson hides behind his laurels, and Browning behind 
the man of the world." Henry James, whose gift of subtle 
analysis was never more felicitously revealed than in his 
expressions about Browning, declared that the poet had 
two personalities: one, the man of the world, who walked 
abroad, talked, did his duty; the other, the Poet, — "an 
inscrutable personage, — who sat at home and knew, as 
well he might, in what quarters of that sphere to look for 
suitable company. The poet and the man of the world 
were disassociated in him as they can rarely elsewhere have 
been." 

For three or four summers after this sojourn in Scotland 
the Brownings were at St. Aubin, in Brittany, where they 
had a cottage "not two steps away " from that of his friend 
Milsand. In the early mornings Browning would be seen 
pacing the sands, reading from his little Greek copy of 
Homer; and in the late afternoons the two friends would 



I THEIR LIFE AND ART 225 

stroU on the Normandy beach with their arms around each 
other's shoulders. They are described as very different in 
appearance, — Browning vigorous and buoyant, Milsand 
nervous, thin, reserved, — but akin in a certain deHcate sensi- 
tiveness, a swift susceptibility to impressions. Of Brown- 
ing Milsand said that what he really valued most was his 
kindness, his simple, open, radiant goodness. "All the 
chords of sympathy vibrated in his strong voice," added 
Milsand. The French critic was very fond of the poet's 
son, and in reference to him he once said: ''The father has 
reason to be happy that in walking before he has opened a 
path for his son, instead of making him stumble." As has 
been seen, in Mrs. Browning's letters, she always shared 
her husband's enthusiasm for Milsand, and the latter had 
said that he felt in her "that shining superiority always 
concealing itself under her unconscious goodness and lovely 
simplicity." 

On Sundays at St. Aubin's, Browning frequently accom- 
panied Milsand to the Uttle chapel of Ch^teau-Blagny, for 
Protestant worshipers. From his cottage Browning could 
gaze across the bay to the hghthouse at Havre, and he 
"saw with a thrill " the spot where he once passed a sum- 
mer with his wife. 

Italian recollections sometimes rose before his inner 
vision. To Isa Blagden, who had gone to Siena, he wrote 
that he could "see the fig-tree under which Ba sat, reading 
and writing, poor old Landor's oak opposite." 

Of Milsand he wrote to a friend: "I never knew or 
shall know his like among men," and to Milsand, who had 
assisted him in some proof-reading, he wrote acknowledg- 
ing his "invaluable assistance," and said: 

"The fact is, in the case of a writer with my peculiarities and 
habits, somebody quite ignorant of what I may have meant 
to write, and only occupied with what is really written, ought 
to supervise the thing produced. I won't attempt to thank 



226 THE BROWNINGS 

you, dearest friend. . . . The poem will reach you in about a 
fortnight. I look forward with all confidence and such delight 
to finding us all together again in the autumn. All love to your 
wife and daughter. R. B." 

Milsand, writing of Browning in the Revue, revealed his 
high appreciation of the poet when he said: "Browning 
suggests a power even greater than his achievement. He 
speaks like a spirit who is able to do that which to past 
centuries has been almost impossible." 

It was St. Aubin that furnished Browning with material 
for his poem, "Red Cotton Night-cap Country," the title 
of which was suggested by Miss Thackeray (now Lady 
Ritchie) who had a cottage there one summer, near those 
of Browning and Milsand. Browning and his sister occu- 
pied one of the most primitive of cottages, but the loca- 
tion was beautiful, perched on the cliff of St. Aubin, and 
commanded a changeful panorama of sea and sky. "The 
sitting-room door opened to the garden and the sea beyond 
— a fresh-swept bare floor, a table, three straw chairs, one 
book upon the table, — the only book he had with him. The 
bedrooms were as bare as the sitting-room, but there was 
a little dumb piano standing in a corner, on which he used 
to practice in the early morning. Mr. Browning declared 
they were perfectly satisfied with their little house; that 
his brains, squeezed as dry as a sponge, were only ready 
for fresh air." ^ As all Browning readers will remember, 
"Red Cotton Night-cap Country" is dedicated to Miss 
Thackeray. 

In the succeeding autumn Browning passed some weeks 
at Fontainebleau, where he was absorbed in reading ^schy- 
lus, and in making an especial study of the great dramatist. 
It was perhaps at this time that he conceived the idea of 
translating the Agamemnon, which, he says in his preface, 

' Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning. London: The Mac- 
millan Company. 




Bust of Robert Browning, by his Son, 
Robert Barrett Browning. 
In the possession of the sculptor at his villa near Florence. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 227 

"was commanded of me by my venerated friend Thomas 
Carlyle, and rewarded it will be if I am permitted to dignify 
it by the prefatory insertion of his dear and noble name." 

Before the close of this year Browning had also complied 
with a request from Tauchnitz to prepare for pubUcation a 
selection from the poems of Mrs. Browning. This Tauch- 
nitz Edition of Mrs. Browning will always retain its in- 
terest as representing her husband's favorites among her 
poems. "The Rhyme of the Duchess May," with its artis- 
tic symmetry and exquisite execution, was of course in- 
cluded. This poem may be said to exhibit all Mrs. Brown- 
ing's poetic characteristics. 

Encouraged by Millais, Robert Barrett Browning had 
seriously entered on the study of painting, his first master 
being M. Heyermans in Antwerp. In 1875 Frederick Leh- 
mann had expressed high appreciation of a work of the 
young artist, the study of a monk absorbed in reading a 
book, — a picture that he liked so well as subsequently to 
purchase it. Another picture by Barrett Browning was 
entitled "The Armorer," and found a place in the Royal 
Academy of that year, and was purchased by a Member of 
Parliament who was also something of a connoisseur in art. 
In this season was inaugurated the annual "private view" 
of the paintings of the poet's son, which were exhibited in 
a house in Queen's Gate Gardens and attracted much at- 
tention. In his son's success Browning took great pride 
and pleasure. On the sale of the picture to the M. P., 
Browning wrote to Millais: 

19, Warwick Crescent, May 10, 1878. 

My Beloved Millais, — You will be gladdened in the kind 
heart of you to learn that Pen's picture has been bought by 
Mr. Fielder, a perfect stranger to both of us. You know what 
your share has been in his success, and it cannot but do a world 



228 THE BROWNINGS 

of good to a young fellow whose fault was never that of being 
insensible to an obligation. 

Ever Affectionately Yours, 

Robert Browning.^ 

In 187 1 Browning had been appointed Life Governor of 
the University of London, an honor that he particularly 
appreciated as indicating the interest of students in his 
poetry. In the late winter of 1872, after an absence of 
thirty years, Alfred Domett again appeared. He had 
vanished 

"like a ghost at break of day," 

and like a ghost he returned, calling at once on his friend 
in Warwick Crescent. A letter from Miss Browning to 
Domett explains itself: 

19, Warwick Crescent, 
Upper Westbourne Terrace, Feb. 1872. 

My Dear Mr. Domett, — My brother was so sorry to 
miss you yesterday; he is a man of many engagements, and un- 
fortunately is engaged every evening next week, or I would ask 
you to join our family dinner as soon as possible — but mean- 
while, as he is impatient to see you, will you be very kind and 
come to lunch with us on Monday at one o'clock? We shall be 
delighted to meet you. If you cannot come on Monday, name 
some other morning. 

Always Yours Truly, 

Sarianna Browning. 

The old friendship between Browning and Domett was 
renewed with constant intercourse and interchange of 
delightful letters. Milsand was in the habit of passing a 
part of every spring with Browning in his home in War- 
wick Crescent, and with the arrival of Domett a warm and 
sincere friendship united all three. 

^ * Life and Letters of Sir John Millais. London: Methuen and Co. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 229 

Once, in Scotland, as the guest of Ernest Benzon, when 
Browning missed part of a visit from Milsand, the poet 
said: "No words can express the love I have for Milsand, 
increasingly precious as he is." The Benzons were at that 
time in the hills above Loch Tummel, where Jowett was 
staying, Swinburne also with the Master of Balliol. Had 
there been a phonograph to register the conversation of 
such a trio as Jowett, Browning, and Swinburne, its records 
would be eagerly sought. 

A fragmentary record, indeed, remains in a note made by 
Edwin Harrison, who was with Jowett at this time. In his 
diary Mr. Harrison recorded: 

"R. B. was in the neighborhood, staying at Little Milton, 
above Loch Tummel, where he was perpetrating 'Prince Hohen- 
stiel-Schwangau ' at the rate of so many lines a day, neither 
more nor less. He walked over to see Jowett one afternoon, 
very keen about a fanciful rendering he had imagined for lines 
in the Alcestis. A few evenings later we met him and his son at 
dinner at Altaine House, by the foot of the loch. You may be 
sure that where Jowett and Browning were, the conversation 
was animated and interesting." 

In "Balaustion's Adventure" the poet seemed to take 
captive the popular appreciation of the day, for more than 
three thousand copies had been sold within the first six 
months, and his sister told Domett that she regarded it as 
the most swiftly appreciated poem of all her brother's 
works. Certainly it is one of the most alluring of Brown- 
ing's works, — this delightful treatment of the interwoven 
life of mortals and of the immortal gods. 

The June of 1872 brought to Browning the sad news of 
the death of his wife's dearest friend, Isa Blagden. "A 
little volume of Isabella Blagden's poems was published 
after her death," writes Thomas Adolphus TroUope. 
"They are not such as would take the world by storm, but 
it is impossible to read them without perceiving how choice 



230 THE BROWNINGS 

a spirit their author must have been, and understanding 
how she was especially honored with the friendship of 
Mrs. Browning."^ 

On the publication of "Red Cotton Night-cap Country," 
Browning sent a first copy to Tennyson, and the Laureate's 
son says of it: "Among the lines which my father liked 
were 

'Palatial, gloomy chambers for parade, 
And passage lengths of lost significance'; 

and he praised the simile about the man with his dead 
comrade in the lighthouse. He wrote to Mr. Browning: 
' My wife has just cut the leaves. I have yet again to thank 
you, and feel rather ashamed that I have nothing of my own 
to send you back.' " 

An entry in Tennyson's diary in the following December 
notes: "Mr. Browning dined with us. He was very affec- 
tionate and delightful. It was a great pleasure to hear his 
words, — that he had not had so happy a time for a long 
while as since we have been in town." 

Tennyson's "Queen Mary" was published in 1875, and 
on receiving a copy from the author Browning wrote ex- 
pressing thanks for the gift, and even more for "Queen 
Mary the poem." He found it "astonishingly fine"; and 
he adds: "What a joy that such a poem should be, and be 
yours." The relations between the two great poets of the 
Victorian age were always ideally beautiful, in their cordial 
friendship and their warm mutual appreciation. 

In a note dated in the Christmas days of 1876 Browning 
writes: 

My Dear Tennyson, — True thanks again, this time for the 
best of Christmas presents, another great work, wise, good, and 
beautiful. The scene where Harold is overborne to take the 

* What I Remember. New York: Harper and Brothers. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 231 

oath is perfect, for one instance. What a fine new ray of light 
you are entwining with your many-colored wreath! . . . 

All happiness befall you and yours this good season and 
ever.^ 

The present Lord Tennyson, in his biography of his 
father, makes many interesting allusions to the friendship 
and the pleasant intercourse between the poets. "Brown- 
ing frequently dined with us," he says, "and the tete-d-tete 
conversations between him and my father on every imagi- 
nable topic were the best talk I have ever heard, so full of 
repartee, epigram, anecdote, depth, and wisdom, too bril- 
liant to be possible to reproduce. These brother poets 
were two of the most widely read men of their time, ab- 
solutely without a touch of jealousy, and reveHng, as it 
were, in each other's power. . . . Browning had a faculty 
for absurd and abstruse rhymes, and I recall a dinner 
where Jebb, Miss Thackeray, and Browning were all 
present, and Browning said he could make a rhyme for 
every word in the language. We proposed rhinoceros, and 
without pause he said, 

*0, if you should see a rhinoceros 
And a tree be in sight, 
Climb quick, for his might 
Is a match for the gods, — he can toss Eros.' " 

A London friend relates that on one occasion Browning 
chanced upon a literal translation some one had made 
from the Norwegian: 

"The soul where love abide th not resembles 
A house by night, without a fire or torch," 

and remarked how easy it would be to put this into rhyme; 
and immediately transmuted it into the couplet, 

* Alfred Lord Tennyson. London and New York: The Macmillan 
Company. 



232 THE BROWNINGS 

"What seems the soul when love's outside the porch? 
A house by night, without a fire or torch." 

When Browning's "Inn Album" appeared, and he sent 
a copy to Tennyson, the Laureate responded: 

" My Dear Browning, — You are the most brotherly of 
poets, and your brother in the muses thanks you with the 
affection of a brother. She would thank you too, if she could 
put hand to pen." 

Tennyson once remarked to his son, Hallam, that he 
wished he had written Browning's lines: 

"The little more, and how much it is, 
The little less, and what worlds away." 

There was an interval of twelve years between the ap- 
pearance of the "Dramatis Personae" (in 1864) and the 
pubUcation of "Pacchiarotto." In this collection Bjown- 
ing's amusing play of rhyme is much in evidence. Among 
Mr. Browning's most enjoyable experiences were his 
frequent visits to Oxford and Cambridge, in both of 
which he was an honored guest. In the spring of 1877 he 
had an especially delightful stay at Oxford, the pleasure 
even beginning on the train, "full of men, all my friends," 
he wrote of it; and continued: "I was welcomed on arrival 
by a Fellow who installed me in my rooms — then came the 
pleasant meeting with Jowett, who at once took me to tea 
with his other guests, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the 
Bishop of London, the Dean of Westminster, Lord Airlie, 
and others." 

There was a banquet and much postprandial eloquence 
that night, and Browning mentions among the speakers 
Lord Coleridge, Professor Smith, Mr. Green (on science 
and literature with a most complimentary appreciation of 
Browning), and "a more rightly-directed one," says the 
poet, "on Arnold, Swinburne, and the old pride of Balliol, 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 233 

Clough, which was cleverly and almost touchingly an- 
swered by dear Matthew Arnold." The Dean of West- 
minster responded to the toast of "The Fellows and the 
Scholars," and the entire affair lasted over six hours. 
"But the whole thing," said Browning, "was brilliant, 
genial, and there was a warmth, earnestness, and refine- 
ment about it which I never experienced in any previous 
pubHc dinner." 

The profound impression that Browning made both by 
his personality and his poetic work is further attested by 
his being again chosen Lord Rector of the University of 
Glasgow. Dr. William Knight, the Professor of Moral 
Philosophy at St. Andrews, urges Browning's acceptance 
of this office, and begs the poet to realize "how the thought- 
ful youth of Scotland " estimate his work. Professor Knight 
closes by saying that his own obhgations to Browning, 
"and to the author of 'Aurora Leigh' are such that of them 
silence is golden." While Mr. Browning was deeply 
touched by this testimonial of esteem, he still, for the second 
time, declined the honor. 

Many readers and lovers of Robert Browning's poem 
"La Saisiaz" httle dream of the singular story connected 
with it. "La Saisiaz" is a chalet above Geneva, high up 
in the Savoyard mountains, looking down on Geneva and 
Lake Leman. It is a tall, white house, with a red roof that 
attracted the lovers of beauty, soHtude, and seclusion. 
Among the few habitues for many years were Robert 
Browning and his sister, Sarianna, and their friend. Miss 
Egerton-Smith. It was the bond of music that especially 
united Browning and this lady, and in London they were 
apt to frequent concerts together. "La Saisiaz" is sur- 
rounded by tall poplar trees, but the balcony from a third- 
floor window, which was Browning's room, looked through 
a space in the trees out on the blue lake, and on this balcony 
he would draw out his chair and writing desk. Back of the 



234 



THE BROWNINGS 



chalet a steep path ran up the mountains, where the three 
friends often climbed, to enjoy a gorgeous and unrivaled 
sunset spectacle. 

In 1877 they were all there as usual in August, and one 
evening had planned that the next day they would start 
early in the morning and pass the day on the mountain, 
going by carriage, a servant accompanying them carrying 
the basket of luncheon. In the early evening Browning 
and Miss Egerton-Smith were out, pacing up and down the 
"grass-grown path," and talking of the infinite life which 
includes death and that which is beyond death. The 
next morning she did not appear, and Browning and his 
sister waited for her. They sat out on the terrace after 
having morning coffee, expecting to see the "tall white 
figure," and finally Miss Browning went to her room to ask 
if she were ill, and she lay dead on the floor. Miss Egerton- 
Smith was buried in the neighboring cemetery of Collonge, 
where her grave, over which a wonderful willow tree bends, 
is still seen — a place of frequent pilgrimage to visitors in 
this region. Five days after her death Browning made 
the excursion up the mountain alone, ' 

" But a bitter touched its sweetness, 'for the thought stung ' Even so 
Both of us had loved and wondered just the same, five days ago! ' " 

La Saleve, the mountain overlooking the Arve and the 
Rhone Valley, is one of the most wildly picturesque points 
in all the Alpine region. The chalet of "La Saisiaz" was 
perched on this mountain spur, about half-way up the 
mountain, on a shelving terrace, with vast and threatening 
rocks rising behind. The poem called "La Saisiaz" is one 
of Browning's greatest. It is full of mystical questioning 
and of his positive and radiant assertions of faith; it 
abounds in vivid and exquisite scenic effects, and it has 
the personal touches of tenderness. The morning after 
her death is thus pictured: 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 235 

"No, the terrace showed no figure, tall, white, leaning through the 
wreaths, 
Tangle-twine of leaf and bloom that intercept the air one breathes.' " 

Browning and Miss Egerton-Smith had first met in 
Florence. She was an English lady of means (being part 
proprietor of the Liverpool Mercury) and of a reserve of 
temperament which kept her aloof from people in general. 
With the poet and his sister she was seen in all that cordial 
sweetness of her nature which her sensitive reserve veiled 
from strangers. 

Italy again! A sapphire sky bending over hills and 
peaks and terraces swimming in violet shadows; villas, and 
sudden views, and arching pianterreni, and winding roads 
between low stone walls hidden in their riotous overgrowth 
of roses! And the soft air, the tall black cypresses against 
the sky, the sunsets and the stars, and golden lights, and 
dear Italian phrases! The trailing ivy vines all in a tangle; 
the wayside shrine, the vast white monastery perched on 
an isolated mountain top; the flaming scarlet of the poppies 
in the grass, the castles and battlements dimly caught on 
the far horizon, — the poetry, the loveHness, the inefifable 
beauty of Italy! Seventeen years had passed since that 
midsummer day when the dear form of his "Lyric Love" 
had been laid under the Florentine lilies, when Browning, 
in the spring of 1878, returned to his Italy. What dreams 
and associations thronged upon him! 

"Places are too much, 
Or else too little for immortal man, — 



. . . thinking how two hands before 
Had held up what is left to only one. " 

Seventeen years had passed, but Venice, the ethereal city, 
the mystic dream of sea and sky, was unchanged, and, 
however unconsciously, the poet was now to initiate 
another era, another new "state" in his life. He never 



236 THE BROWNINGS 

again went farther south than Venice; he could never see 
Florence or Rome again, where she had lived beside him; 
but the dream city now became for him a second and dearer 
home. With his sister Sarianna, he broke the journey by 
lingering in a hotel on the summit of the Spliigen, where 
he indulged himself in those long walks which he loved, 
Miss Browning often accompanying him down the Via Cala 
Mala, or to the summit where they could look down into 
Lombardy. Browning was at work on his "Dramatic 
Idyls," and not only "Ivan Ivanovitch," but several others 
were written on the Spliigen. Pausing at Lago di Como, 
and a day in Verona, they made their way to Asolo, "my 
very own of all Italian cities," the poet would say of it. 
Asolo, which from its rocky hilltop, has an outlook over 
all Veneto, — over all Italy, it would almost seem, for the 
towers and domes of Venice are visible on a clear day, — 
gave its full measure of joy to Browning, and when they 
descended into Venice they were domiciled in the Palazzo 
Brandolin-Rota, on the Grand Canal, near the Accademia. 
In Venice he met a Russian lady whom he consulted about 
some of the names he was giving to the characters in his 
"Ivan Ivanovitch." 

The success of his son in the Paris Salon and other ex- 
hibitions was a continual happiness to Mr. Browning. 
Both in Paris and in London the pictures of Barrett Brown- 
ing were accorded an honorable place "on the line"; he 
received a medal from the Salon, and there was not wanting, 
either, that commercial side of success that sustains its 
theory. The young artist had now seriously entered on 
sculpture, under Rodin, with much prestige and promise. 

The first series of "Dramatic Idyls" was published in 
the autumn of 1872, closely following "La Saisiaz" and 
the "Two Poets of Croisic." The devoted student of 
Browning could hardly fail to be impressed by one feature 
of his poetry which, though a prominent one, has received 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 237 

little attention from the critics. This feature is his doc- 
trine of the sub-self, as the source of man's highest spiritual 
knowledge. He has given his fullest expression of this 
beUef in his "Paracelsus," and it appears in "Sordello" 
(especially in the fifth book), in "A Death in the Desert," 
in "Fifine," and in "Christopher Smart," and is largely 
developed in "The Ring and the Book." Again, in "Bea- 
trice Signorini," contained in "Asolando," published only 
on the day of his death, this theory is again apparent, and 
these instances are only partial out of the many in which 
the doctrine is touched or elaborated, showing how vital 
it was with him from the earhest to the latest period of his 
work. Another striking quahty in Browning is that of the 
homogeneous spirit of his entire poetic expression. It is 
the great unity in an equally great variety. It is always 
clear as to the direction in which Browning is moving, and 
as to the supreme message of his philosophy of life. 



CHAPTER XI 

1880 - 1888 

"Moreover something is or seems, 
That touches me with mystic gleams, 
Like shadows of forgotten dreams." 

"Alas! our memories may retrace 
Each circumstance of time and place, 
Season and change come back again, 
And outward things unchanged remain; 
The rest we cannot re-instate; 
Ourselves we cannot re-create; 
Nor set our souls to the same key 
Of the remembered harmony!" 

"Les Charmettes" — Venetian Days — Dr. Hiram Corson — 
The Browning Society — Oxeord Honors Browning — 
Katherine DeKay Bronson — Honors from Edinburgh 

— Visit to Professor Masson — Italian Recognition — 
Nancioni — The Goldoni Sonnet — At St. Moritz — In 
Palazzo Giustiniani — "Ferishtah's Fancies" — Compan- 
ionship with his Son — Death of Milsand — Letters to 
Mrs. Bronson — DeVere Gardens — Palazzo Rezzonico 

— Sunsets from the Lido — Robert Barrett Browning's 
Gift in Portraiture. 

Twenty-five years after Robert Browning had visited the 
famous haunts of Rousseau with his wife, he again made a 
little sojourn with his sister in lovely Chambery, making 
various excursions in all the picturesque region about, and 
again visiting "Les Charmettes," which Miss Browning 
had not before seen; as before, Browning sat down to the 
old harpsichord, attempting to play "Rousseau's Dream," 
but only two notes of the antique instrument responded 



THE BROWNINGS 239 

to his touch. Through all the wonderful scenery of the 
Mont Cenis pass they proceeded to Turin and thence to 
Venice, where they arrived in the midst of the festivities 
of the Congress Carnival in September of 1881. The 
Storys, whom Browning had anticipated meeting in 
Venice, had gone to Vallombrosa, where their daughter 
(the Marchesa Peruzzi di' Medici) had a villa, to which 
the family retired in summer from their stately old 
palace in Florence. Mr. Story's two sons, the painter and 
the sculptor, both had studios in Venice at this time, and 
Mr. Browning often strolled into these. Among other 
friends Browning and his sister visited the Countess 
Mocenigo, who was ensconced in the same palace that 
Byron had occupied. She showed her guests through all 
the rooms with their classic associations, and Browning sat 
down to the desk at which Byron had written the last 
canto of " Childe Harold." To the satisfaction of the Brown- 
ings, Venice soon regained her usual quiet, — that wonder- 
ful silence broken only by the plash of water against marble 
steps, and the cries of the gondoliers, — and he resumed his 
long walks, often accompanied by Miss Browning, exploring 
every curious haunt and lingering in shops and squares. 
The poet familiarized himself with the enchanting dream 
city, as no tours in gondolas alone could ever do. To him 
Venice came to be dear beyond words, and soon after he 
made all arrangements to purchase the Palazzo Manzoni, 
an ancient Venetian palace of the fifteenth century, whose 
facade was a faint glow of color from its medallions of 
colored marbles, and whose balconies and arched windows 
seemed especially designed for a poet's habitation. But 
the ancient structure was found to be in a too perilous con- 
dition, and Browning, with never-failing regret, resigned 
the prospect; nor was he ever consoled, it is said, until, 
some years later, his son became the owner of the noble 
Palazzo Rezzonico. 



240 THE BROWNINGS 

Every day the poet saw Venice transformed into new 
splendor. "To see these divine sunsets is the joy of life," 
he would say, as a city, flushed with rose, reflected itself 
in pale green waters, and the golden sunset filled with liquid 
Kght every narrow street and passage, contrasting sharply 
with the dense black shadows. Browning had a love of the 
sky that made its glorious panorama one of the dehghts 
of his life. 

One of the crowning honors of the poet's Ufe invested 
these days for him with renewed vitality of interest, — 
that of the formation of the Browning Society in London 
for the study and promulgation of his poetic work. This 
was, indeed, a contrast to the public attitude of thirty 
years before. Once, in a letter to Mrs. Millais (dated 
January 7, 1867) he had described himself to her as "the 
most unpopular poet thateverwas." The Browning Society 
was due, in its first inception, to Dr. Furnivall and to 
Miss Emily Hickey, and its founding was entirely without 
Browning's knowledge. Although the poet avowed him- 
self as "quite other than a Browningite," he could not 
fail to be touched and gratified by such a mark of interest 
and appreciation. 

Dr. Hiram Corson, Professor of Literature at Cornell 
University, had, however, formed a Browning Club, com- 
posed of professors and their wives and many eminent 
scholars, some four or five years before the formation of 
the Browning Society in London, and the notable Browning 
readings which Professor Corson had given continually in 
many of the large cities and before universities, had been 
of incalculable aid in making Robert Browning's poetry, 
known and understood in the United States. As an inter- 
preter of Browning, Dr. Corson stood unrivaled. His 
aim was to give to his audience the spiritual meaning of the 
poem read. His rich voice had the choral intonation 
without which no poem can be vocally interpreted. His 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 257 

To the Marchesa Peruzzi di' Medici who sent to him a 
translation she had made of the "Ricordo Autobiografici " 
of Giovanni Dupre, Browning thus writes:^ 

" It is not so very ' little ' an affair, and in the fear that when 
my sister has finished it, I may have to begin my own reading, 
and end it so late as to lead you to suppose that either book or 
letter has gone wrong, on this account I write at once to thank 
you most heartily. My sister says the Autobiography is fasci- 
nating; I can well believe it, for I never knew such a work to be 
without interest, and this of Dupre must abound in precisely 
the matters that interest me most. . . . When I have thor- 
oughly gone through the book I will write you again, if you 
permit me, as I know your old memories will be indulgent in 
the case. We may be in Italy this autumn, and if you are 
within reach you will be certain to see the old friend who always 
rejoices when he hears of your well-being, and trusts it may con- 
tinue. . . . Pen is very well; at Dinard just now, painting land- 
scape in the open air. I have told him already of the book 
which he will take delight in reading. I am occupied this very 
day in sending his statue of 'Dryope' to Brussels, where the Ex- 
hibition will give it a chance of being judged by better knowledge 
than is found here." 

The following letter indicates, in Browning's own charm- 
ing way, the warm attachment that both he and his sister 
had for Mrs. Bronson: 

19, Warwick Crescent, W. 
Feb. 15, '85. 

Dearest Mrs. Bronson, — This dull morning grew to near 
blackness itself, when, at breakfast, my sister said once again, 
"No news of her from Venice," — and I once again calculated 
and found by this time it was a month and a full half since we 
heard from you. Why should this be? If I had simply and 
rationally written a line, instead of thinking a thought, I should 
have known, as your dear goodness will let me know, as soon as 
you receive this, how you are, how Edith is, now that the winter 

* William Wetmore Story. Boston: The Houghton-Mifflin Company. 



258 THE BROWNINGS 

is over and gone with the incentives to that cough which was 
still vexatious when we had your last letter. 

Do not let us mind high-days and holidays: be sure of this, 
that every day will be truly festal that brings us a word from 
you, for other clouds than the material ones make us melan- 
choly just now; and how this turbid element about us contrasts 
with the golden hours near the beloved friends, — perhaps 
more vivid, — certainly more realized as valuable, than ever! 
I do not mean to write much because what I want to impress 
on your generosity is that just a half sheet, with mere intelli- 
gence about you, will be a true comfort and sustainment to me 
and to my sister, — the barest account of yourself, and what 
we appreciate with you; and, for our part, you shall hear, at 
least, that we are well, or ailing, stationary, or about to move. 

In the early spring Browning again writes to Mrs. 

Bronson: 

19, Warwick Crescent, W. 
April 8, '85. 

Dearest Friend, — This is not a letter, for I have this minute 
returned from a funeral, in pitiful weather, and am unable 
either in body or soul to write one, much as I hope to do, with 
something of my warm self in it. But I find Burne Jones's pretty 
and touching letter, and want this leaf to serve as an envelope 
to what may please you, who deserve so thoroughly that it 
should. I will write in a day or two. I heard from Pen this 
morning, who is at Dinard, being too ill to remain in Paris, but 
finds himself already better. He told me and re-told me how 
good you had been to him. How I trust all is going well with 
you, — certainly you need no assurance of, — enough that I 
love you with all my heart. Bless you and your Edith. It is 
an Edith, — Proctor's (Barry Cornwall's) daughter, whom I 
have been following to her grave. Some fifty years ago her 
father said to me while caressing her, "Ah, Browning, this is 
the Poetry." " I know it." " No, you know nothing about it." 
Well, if I was ignorant then, I am instructed now. So, dear 
Two Poems, long may I have you to read and to enjoy! 
Yours affectionately Ever, 

Robert Browning. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 259 

In the following autumn Mr. Barrett Browning, who 
had not seen Venice since his infancy, joined his father, 
and was "simply infatuated" with the dream city. It 
was for his sake that Browning had wished to purchase 
the Manzoni Palace, *' to secure for him a perfect domicile, 
every faciHty for his painting and sculpture." 

The autumn of 1886 brought to Browning a great sad- 
ness in the death of Milsand, and Miss Browning being out 
of health, and unequal to a continental journey, they both 
passed a part of the autumn at Llangollen, where Sir Theo- 
dore and Lady Martin (Helen Faucit) were their near 
neighbors, with whom they had tea every Sunday, and 
renewed one of the most deUghtful friendships. 

On the publication of Dr. Corson's "Introduction to 
the Poetry of Browning," he sent a copy to the poet who 
thus replied: 

19. Warwick Crescent. 
W. 

Dec. 28. '86. - 
My dear D'' Corson, 

I waited some days after the arrival of your Book and 
Letter thinking I might be able to say more of my sense of 
your goodness: but I can do no more now than a week ago. 
You "hope I shall not find too much to disapprove of": what 
I ought to protest against, is "a load to sink a navy — too 
much honor": how can I put aside your generosity, as if cold 
justice — however befitting myself, — would be in better agree- 
ment with your nature? Let it remain as an assurance to 
younger poets that, after fifty years' work unattended by any 
conspicuous recognition, an over-payment may be made, if 
there be such another munificent appreciator as I have been 
privileged to find — in which case let them, even if more de- 
serving, be equally grateful. 

I have not observed anything in need of correction in the 
notes. The "little tablet" was a famous "Last Supper," men- 
tioned by Varwn, (page. 232) and gone astray long ago from 
the Church of S. Spirito: it turned up, according to report, in 



26o THE BROWNINGS 

some obscure corner, while I was in Florence, and was at once 
acquired by a stranger. I saw it, — genuine or no, a work of 
great beauty. (Page 156.) A " canon," in music, is a piece 
wherein the subject is repeated — in various keys — and being 
strictly obeyed in the repetition, becomes the "Canon" — the 
imperative law — to what follows. Fifty of such parts would 
be indeed a notable peal: to manage three is enough of an 
achievement for a good musician. 

And now, — here is Christmas: all my best wishes go to you 
and Mrs. Corson — those of my sister also. She was indeed 
suflFering from grave indisposition in the summer, but is happily 
recovered. I could not venture, imder the circumstances, to 
expose her convalescence to the accidents of foreign travel — 
hence our contenting ourselves with Wales rather than Italy. 
Shall you be again induced to visit us? Present or absent, 
you will remember me always, I trust, as 

Yours most affectionately 
Robert Browning. 

The year of 1887 was an eventful one in that the "Par- 
leyings " were published in the early spring; that Brown- 
ing removed from Warwick Crescent to 29 DeVere 
Gardens; and that the marriage of his son to Miss Codding- 
ton of New York was celebrated on October 4 of that year, 
an event that gave the poet added happiness. To a stranger 
who had asked permission to call upon him Browning 
wrote about this time: 

"... My son returns the day after to-morrow with his 
wife, from their honeymoon at Venice, to stay with me till to- 
morrow week only, when they leave for Liverpool and America 
— there to pass the winter. During their short stay, I am 
bound to consult their convenience, and they ^\'ill be engaged 
in visiting, or being visited by friends, so as to preclude me 
from any chance of an hour at my own disposal. If you please — 
or, rather, if circumstances permit you to give me the pleasure 
of seeing you at twelve on Saturday morning, the first day when 
I shall be at liberty, I shall be happy to receive you." 



19. Warwick Crcitent. 



*^ ^^H Hi/ ^ntU ^>Ud4^7 ^"^^ /^ /t^V^/A^ 



Hl^ jp^ pI'^^M W>4 h^ncJu^^P ^ 



^ Afv - >^ '^ Okni/>^Hu^ : ^- ^ ^ 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 261 

The stranger did so arrange that his visit should extend 
itself over the magic date of "November 5th," and on that 
day he stood at the portal to DeVere Gardens house. 

"I was taken up to the poet's study," he writes. "There 
had been that day a memorial meeting for Matthew Arnold, 
to which Browning had been, and he spoke with reminiscent 
sadness of Arnold's life. 

"*I have been thinking all the way home of his hardships,' 
said Mr. Browning. 'He once told me, when I asked why he 
had not recently written any poetry, that he could not afford 
to, but that w^hen he had saved enough, he intended to give up 
all other work, and devote himself to poetry. I wonder if he 
has turned to it now?' Browning added musingly." 

One interesting incident related by this caller is that, 
having just been reading and being greatly impressed by 
Mr. Nettleship's analysis and interpretation of "Childe 
Roland," he asked the author if he accepted it. "Oh, no," 
replied Mr. Browning; "not at all. Understand, I don't 
repudiate it, either; I only mean that I was conscious of no 
allegorical intention in writing it. 'Twas like this; one 
year in Florence I had been rather lazy; I resolved that 
I would write something every day. Well, the first day I 
wrote about some roses, suggested by a magnificent 
basket that some one had sent my wife. The next day 
* Childe Roland ' came upon me as a kind of dream. I 
had to write it, then and there, and I finished it the same 
day, I believe. But it was simply that I had to do it. I did 
not know then what I meant beyond that, and I 'm sure 
I don't know now. But I am very fond of it." 

This interesting confession emboldened the visitor to 
ask if the poet considered ' James Lee's wife ' quite guilt- 
less in her husband's estrangement. "Well, I 'm not sure," 
replied Mr. Browning; "I was always very fond of her, but 
I fancy she had not much tact, and did not quite know how 
to treat her husband. I think she worried him a little. 



262 THE BROWNINGS 

But if you want to know any more," he continued, with a 
twinkle in his eye, "you had better ask the Browning So- 
ciety, — you have heard of it, perhaps?" 

When Robert Barrett Browning purchased the Palazzo 
Rezzonico, the acquirement was a delight to his father, 
not unmixed with a trace of consternation, for it is one of 
the grandest and most imposing palaces in Italy. Up to 
1758 it was occupied by Cardinal Rezzonico himself, when, 
at that date, he became Pope under the title of Clement 
XIII. This palace, built in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, commands an unparalleled situation on the Grand 
Canal, and the majestic structure of white marble, with its 
rich carvings, the baroque ornaments of its key-stones, 
its classic cornices and tripartite loggias, its columns and 
grand architectural Hues, is remarked, even in Venice, the 
city of palaces, for its sumptuous magnificence. As Mr. 
Browning had before remarked to Mrs. Bronson, *'Pen " 
was infatuated with Venice. It is equally true that 
much of the infatuation of the ethereal city for subse- 
quent visitors was due in no small measure to the beautiful 
and reverent manner in which Robert Barrett Browning 
made this palace a very Valhalla of the wedded poets, 
Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Here the son 
gathered every exquisite treasure associated with his 
mother, and when, three years later, his father breathed 
his last within this noble palace, the younger Browning 
added to the associations of his mother those, also, of his 
father's books, art, and intimate possessions. With his 
characteristic courtesy and generous consideration Mr. 
Barrett Browning permitted visitors, for many years, 
through his entire ownership of the palace, to visit and 
enjoy the significant collections, treasures which his taste 
and his love had there gathered. 

On the fagade of the palace two stately entrances open 
upon the broad flight of marble steps that lead down 




PoRTRMT OF Robert Barrett Browning 

("Penini"), as a Child. 

Painted at Siena, by Hamilton WilJ, iS5g. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 263 

to the water, and on the architraves are carved river- 
gods. In the spacious court was placed his own statue 
of "Dry ope." Ascending one marble flight of the grand 
escaiier, one entered a lofty apartment whose noble pro- 
portions and richness of effect were most impressive. 
The floor, of red marble, in its rich, Byzantine hue, 
harmonized with *a richly painted ceiling, which was 
one celebrated in Venetian art. From this vast salon 
opened, through richly carved doors, a series of rooms, 
each made vital with the portraits, sketches, busts, and 
other memorials of the poets. There were Story's busts of 
Browning and of his wife; there was Robert Barrett 
Browning's bust of his father, — one of the most remark- 
able among portrait busts in contemporary art; the por- 
traits of Robert and Elizabeth Browning painted by Gor- 
digiani of Rome, about 1855; a lovely pastel of Mrs. 
Browning when she was a child, representing her as stand- 
ing in a garden, holding up her apron filled with flowers; 
there was her little writing-desk, and other intimate per- 
sonal mementoes about. The immense array of presen- 
tation copies from other authors to the poets made an in- 
teresting Ubrary of themselves, as did the various transla- 
tions of their own poems into many languages. There was 
a portrait of Browning painted when a young man, with a 
troubadour cloak falling over his shoulders; and a most 
interesting portrait of Milsand, painted by Barrett Brown- 
ing, as a gift to his father. 

There was also a picture of himself as a lad, the "Penini" 
of Siena days, mounted on his pony, and painted by 
Hamilton Wild (a Boston artist), in that most picturesque 
of hiU-towns, during one of those summers that the 
Brownings and the Storys had passed in the haunts of 
Santa Caterina. 

By Mrs. Browning's little writing tablet was placed the 
last manuscript she had ever written; and on a table lay a 



264 THE BROWNINGS 

German translation of "Aurora Leigh," with an inscrip- 
tion of presentation to Browning. 

From one of these salons, looking out on the Grand 
Canal, is an alcove, formerly used as the private chapel 
of the Rezzonico. It was all white and gold, with a Vene- 
tian window draped in the palest green plush, while on 
either side were placed tall vases encrusted with green. In 
this alcove Mr. Barrett Browning had caused to be in- 
scribed, in golden letters, surrounded with traceries and 
arabesques in gold, a copy of the inscription that was 
composed by the poet, Tommaseo, and placed by the city 
of Florence on the wall of Casa Guidi, near the grand 
portal: 

QTH SCRISSE E MORI 

ELISABETTA BARRETT BROWNING 

CHE IN CUORE DI DONNA CONCILIA VA 

SCIENZA DI DOTTO E SPIRIT© DI POETA 

E FECE DEL SUO VERSO AUREO ANELLO 

FRA ITALIA E INGHILTERRA 

PONE QUESTO MEMORIA 

riRENZE GRATA 

1861. 

On the first floor was the room in which the poet wrote 
when the guest of his son in the palace; a sola empaneled 
with the most exquisite decorated alabaster, panels of which 
also formed the doors, and opening from this was his 
sleeping-room, also beautifully decorated. 

In one splendid sala, with rich mural decorations, and 
floor of black Italian marble, were many choice works of 
art, rare souvenirs, pictures of special claim to interest, 
wonderful tapestries, and almost, indeed, an embarras de 
richesse of beauty. 

In 1906 Robert Barrett Browning sold the Rezzonico; 
and now, beside his casa and studios in Asolo, he has one 
of the old Medici villas, near Florence, — "La Torre 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 265 

air Antella," with a lofty tower, from which the view is one 
of the most commanding and fascinating in all Tuscany. 
The panorama includes all Florence, with her domes and 
campanile and towers; and the Fiesolean hills, with the 
old town picturesquely revealed among the trees and 
against the background of sky, and with numerous other 
villages and hamlets, and a mountain panorama of changing 
color always before the eye. Mr. Browning is one of the 
choicest of spirits, with all that culture and beauty of 
spiritual Hfe that characterized his parents. He is a 
great linguist, and is one of the most interesting of men. 
No one knew his father, in that wonderful inner way, as 
did his son. He was twelve years old at the time of his 
mother's death, and from that period he was the almost 
constant companion of his father, until Browning's death, 
twenty-eight years later. Robert Barrett Browning has 
also purchased the massive Casa Guidi, thus fitly becoming 
the owner of the palace in which he was born, and that is 
forever enshrined in Literary history and poetic romance. 
It is, also, one of those poetic sequences of life, that Casa 
Guidi and Palazzo Peruzzi, near each other, in the Via 
Maggiore in Florence, are respectively owned by Mr. 
Browning and the Marchesa Peruzzi di' Medici, under 
which stately title Mr. Story's daughter Edith, the child- 
hood friend and companion of "Penini," is now known. 

After the return to London of Browning and his sister 
Sarianna, from St. Moritz, his constant letters to Mrs. 
Bronson again take up the story of a poet's days. 

In the early winter he thus writes to his cherished 
friend — the date being December 4, 1887: 

"Now let us shut the gondola glasses (I forget the technical 
word) and Talk, dear Friend! Here are your dear labors of 
love, — the letters and enclosures, and here is my first day of 
leisure this long fortnight, for, would you believe it? I have been 
silly enough to sit every morning for three hours to one painter, 



266 THE BROWNINGS 

who took an additional two hours yesterday, in order to get 
done; before which exercise of patience I had to sit to another 
gentleman, who will summon me again in due time, — all this 
since my return from Venice and the youthful five ! However, 
when, two days ago, there was yet another application to sit, 
the bear within the 'lion' came out, and I declined, as little 
gruffly as I was able. And so the end is I can talk and enjoy 
myself — even at a distance — with a friend as suddenly dear 
as all hands from the clouds must needs be. I will not try and 
thank you for what you know I so gratefully have accepted, — 
and shall keep forever, I trust. 

"Well, here is the Duke's letter; he is a man of few words, 
and less protestation; but feels, as he should, your kindness, and 
will gladly acknowledge it, should you come to England, and 
it seems that you may. But what will Venice be without you 
next year, if we return there as we hope to do? 

"... Mrs. Bloomfield Moore passed through London some 
three weeks ago, and at once wrote to me about what pictures 
of Robert's might be visible? She at once bought the huge ' De- 
livery to the Secular Arm,' for the Philadelphia Academy of 
Fine Arts, and the 'Dinard Market Woman' for herself, and 
this so spontaneously, and I did hear in a day or two that she 
was convinced I had not asked half enough for the pictures! 
She had inquired at the Gallery where the larger one was exhib- 
ited, and they estimated its value at so much. I told her their 
estimate was not mine, and that Robert was thoroughly re- 
munerated — to say nothing of what he would think of all this 
graciousness; and since her departure I have had an extremely 
gratifying letter full of satisfaction at her purchases. ..." 

On the death of Lord Houghton, Mr. Browning had 
been prevailed upon to accept the office of Foreign Cor- 
respondent to the Royal Academy; he was much beloved 
by the Academicians, many of whom were among his 
familiar friends, and that his son was an artist endeared 
to him all art. 

To Mrs. Bronson Browning once remarked: "Do you 
know, dear friend, if the thing were possible, I would re- 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 267 

nounce all personal ambition and would destroy every 
line I ever wrote, if by so doing I could see fame and honors 
heaped on my Robert's head." Mrs. Bronson's comment 
on this was that in his son he saw the image of his wife, 
whom he adored, — "literally adored," she added. 

At the Academy banquets Browning was always an 
honored guest, and his nomination by the President to the 
post of Foreign Correspondent was promptly ratified by 
the Council. 

On the removal to DeVere Gardens, Mr. Browning took 
great pleasure in the arrangement of his home. His father's 
library of six thousand books was now unpacked, and, 
for the first time, he had space for them; many of the 
beautiful old carvings, chests, cabinets, bookcases, that 
he had brought from Florence, could in the new home 
be placed to advantage. The visitor, to-day, to Mr. Barrett 
Browning's Florentine villa will see many of these rich 
and elaborate furnishings, and the younger Browning 
will point out an immense sofa (that resembles a cata- 
falque), with amused recollection of having once seen 
his father and Ruskin sitting side by side on it, "their 
feet dangling." From Venice the poet had brought home, 
first and last, many curious and beautiful things, — a 
silver lamp, old sconces from churches, and many things 
of which he speaks in his letters to Mrs. Bronson, 

The initial poem in "Asolando," entitled "Rosny," 
was written at the opening of the year 1888, and it was 
soon followed by "Beatrice Signorini " and "Flute-Music." 
In February he writes to George Murray Smith, his pub- 
lisher, of his impulse to revise "Pauline," which had lain 
untouched for fifty years, — -an impulse to "correct the 
most obvious faults . . . letting the thoughts, such as 
they are, remain exactly as at first." It seems that the 
portrait, too, that is to accompany the volume does not 
quite please him, and he suggests slight changes. "Were 
Pen here," he says, "he could manage it all in a moment." 



268 THE BROWNINGS 

This confidence was not undeserved. Richly gifted in 
many directions, a true child of the gods, Robert Barrett 
Browning has an almost marvelous gift in portraiture. 
He seems to be the diviner, the seer, as well as the artist, 
when transferring to canvas a face that interests him. 
The portrait of Milsand, to which allusion has before been 
made, and that of his father, painted in his Oxford robes, 
with "the old yellow book in his hand," which is in Balliol, 
are signal illustrations of his power in portraying almost 
the very mental processes of thought and feeling and 
kindling imagination, — all that goes to make up the 
creative life of art. 

He is fairly a connoisseur in literature, as well as in his 
own specialties of painting and sculpture; and the poetry 
of the elder Browning has no more critically appreciative 
reader than his son. Some volume of his father's is always 
at hand in his traveling; and he, like all Browning-lovers, 
can never open any volume of Robert Browning's without 
finding revealed to him new vistas of thought, renewed 
aspiration and resolve for all noble living, and infinite 
suggestiveness of spiritual achievement. 



CHAPTER XII 
1888-1889 

"On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round." 

"O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, 
And with God be the rest!" 

"AsoLA>fDo" — Last Days in DeVere Gardens — Letters of 
Browning and Tennyson — Venetian Lingerings and 
Friends — Mrs. Bronson's Choice Circle — Browning's 
Letters to Mrs. Bronson — Asolo — "In Ruby, Emerald, 
Chrysopras" — Last Meeting of Browning and Story — 
In Palazzo Rezzonico — Last Meeting with Dr. Corson 

— Honored by Westminster Abbey — A Cross of Violets 

— Choral Music to Mrs. Browning's Poem, "The Sleep" 

— "And with God be the Rest." 

In the winter of 1887-1888 Mr. Browning wrote "Rosny," 
which follows the "Prologue" in "Asolando," and soon 
after the "Beatrice Signorini" and "Flute Music." He 
also completely revised his poems for the new edition which 
his publishers were issuing in monthly volumes, the works 
completed in July. "Parleyings," which had appeared 
in 1887, had, gloriously or perilously as may be, appar- 
ently taken all the provinces of learning, if not all the 
kingdoms of earth, for its own; for its themes ranged 
over Philosophy, Politics, Love, and Art, as well as Al- 
chemy, and one knows not what; but its power and vigor 
reveal that there had been no fading of the divine fire. 
The poet made a few minor changes in "The Inn Album," 
but with that exception he agreed with his friend and 
pubhsher, that no further alterations of any importance 



270 THE BROWNINGS 

were required. Mr. Browning's relations with his publishers 
were always harmonious and mutually gratifying. Such a 
relation is, to any author, certainly not the least among the 
factors of his happiness or of his power of work, and to 
Browning, George Murray Smith was his highly prized 
friend and counselor, as well as publisher, whose generous 
courtesies and admirable judgment had more than once 
even served him in ways quite outside those of literature. 
In the late summer of 1888 Browning and his sister 
fared forth for Primiero, to join the Barrett Brownings, 
with whom the poet concurred in regarding this little 
hill-town as one of the most beautiful of places, his favorite 
Asolo always excepted. "Primiero is far more beautiful 
than Gressoney, far more than Saint-Pierre de Chartreuse," 
he wrote to a friend : "with the magnificence of the moun- 
tains that, morning and evening, are Uterally transmuted 
to gold." In letters or conversation, as well as in his verse, 
Browning's love of color was always in evidence. "He 
dazzles us with scarlet, and crimson, and rubies, and 
the poppy's 'red effrontery,'" said an English critic; 
"with topaz, amethyst, and the glory of gold, and makes 
the sonnet ache with the luster of blue." When, in the 
haunting imagery of memory pictures, after leaving 
Florence, he reverted to the gardens of Isa Blagden, on 
Bellosguardo, the vision before him was of " the herbs 
in red flower, and the butterflies on the wall under the 
olive trees." For Browning was the poet of every thrill 
and intensity of life — the poet and prophet of the dawn, 
not of the dark; the herald who announced the force of 
the positive truth and ultimate greatness; never the in- 
terpretor of the mere negations of life. The splendor 
of color particularly appealed to him, thrilling every nerve; 
and when driving with Mrs. Bronson in Asolo he would 
beg that the coachman would hasten, if there were fear of 
missing the sunset pageant from the loggia of "La Mura." 




PoRTR.\iT OF Robert Browning ly 1865. 

Painted by George Frederick Watts, R. A. 

In th; p333e53ion of the National Portrait Gallery, London. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 271 

In "Pippa Passes," how he painted the splendor of sun- 
rise pouring into her chamber, and in numberless other 
of his poems is this fascination of color for him revealed. 
Under the date of August, 1888, the poet writes to Mrs. 
Bronson: 

Dearest,— We have at last, only yesterday, fully determined 
on joining the couple at Primiero, and, when the heats abate, 
going on to Venice for a short stay. May the stay be with you 
as heretofore? I don't feel as if I could go elsewhere, or do 
otherwise, although in case of any arrangements having been 
made that stand in the way, there is the obvious Hotel Suisse. 
I suppose at need there could be found a messenger to poor 
Guiseppina, whose misfortunes I commiserate. You know 
exactly how much and how little we want. But if I am to get 
any good out of my visit I must lead the quietest of lives. . . . 

We propose setting out next Monday, the 13th, — Basle, 
Milan, Padua, Treviso, Primiero, by the week's end. 

I have been nearly eleven weeks in town, with an excep- 
tional four days' visit to Oxford; and hard social work all the 
time, indeed, up to the latest, when, three weeks ago, I found 
it impossible to keep going. Don't think that the kindness 
which sometimes oppresses me while in town, forgets me after- 
ward; I have pouring invitations to the most attractive places 
in England, Ireland, Scotland, — but " c'est admirable, mais ce 
n'est pas la paix." May I count on the " paix " where I so much 
enjoyed it? I hear with delight that Edith will be with you 
again, — that completes the otherwise incompleteness. Yes, 
the Rezzonico is what you Americans call a " big thing." . . . 
But the interest I take in its acquisition is different altogether 
from what accompanied the earlier attempt. At most, I look 
on approvingly, as by all accoimts I am warranted in doing, 
but there an end. . . . 

... So, dearest friend, "a rivederci! " Give my love to Edith 
and tell her I hope in her keeping her kindness for me, spite of 
the claims on it of all the others. And my sister, not one word 
of her? Somehow you must know her more thoroughly than 
poor, battered me, tugged at and torn to pieces, metaphorically, 



272 THE BROWNINGS 

by so many sympathizers, real or pretended. She wants change, 
probably more than I do. And, but for her, I believe I should 
continue here, with the gardens for my place of healing. How 
she will enjoy the sight of you, if it may be! Tell me what is 
to be hoped, or feared, or despaired of, at Pen's address, what- 
ever it may be. And remember me as ever most affectionately 
yours, 

Robert Browning. 

The succeeding letter, writen from Albergo Gille, Pri- 
miero, tells the story of a rather trying journey, what with 
the heat and his indisposition, but on finding himself 
bestowed at Primiero he is "absolutely well again," and 
anticipating his Venice: "what a Venice it would be," 
he says, "if I went elsewhere than to the beloved friend 
who calls me so kindly!" And he adds: 

" My stay will be short, but sweet in every sense of the word 
if I find her in good health, and in all other respects just as I 
left her; 'no change' meaning what it does to me who remember 
her goodness so well. It will be delightful to meet Edith again, 
if only it may be that she arrives while we are yet with you, 
even before, perhaps. 

"Can I tell you anything about my journey except that it 
was so agreeable an one? On the first evening as 1 stepped out- 
side our carriage for a moment, I caught sight of a well-known 
face. 'Dr. Butler, surely.' You have heard of his marriage 
the other day to a learnedest of young ladies, who beat all 
the men last year at Greek. He insisted on introducing me to her ; 
I had seen her once before without undergoing that formality 
and willingly I shook hands with a sprightly young person . . . 
pretty, and grand-daughterly, she is, however, only twenty-six 
years his jimior. Then, this happened; the little train from 
Montebelluna to Feltre was crowded — we could find no room 
except in a smoking carriage — wherein I observed a good- 
natured, elderly gentleman, an Italian, I took for granted. 
Presently he said, 'Can I offer you an English paper?' 'What, 
are you English? ' ' Oh, yes, and I know you, — who are going 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 273 

to see your son at Primiero.' 'Why, who can you be?' 'One 
who has seen you often.' 'Not surely, Mr. Malcolm?' 'Well, 
nobody else.' So ensued an affectionate greeting, he having 
been the guardian angel of Pen in all his chafferings about the 
purchase of the palazzo. He gave me abundance of information, 
and satisfied me on many points. I had been anxious to write 
and thank him as he deserved, but this provided an earlier 
and more graceful way, for a beginning at least. 

"Pen is at work on a pretty picture, a peasant girl whom he 
picked up in the neighborhood, and his literal treatment stands 
him in good stead; he is reproducing her cleverly, at any rate, he 
takes pains enough." 

Towards the end of September they joined in Venice 
the "beloved friend," whose genius for friendship only 
made each sojourn with her more beautiful than the pre- 
ceding, if that which was perfect could receive an added 
degree. "It was curious to see," wrote Mrs. Bronson, 
*' how on each of his arrivals in Venice he took up his life 
precisely as he had left it." Browning and his sister fre- 
quently went on Sundays to the Waldensian chapel, where 
in this autumn there was a preacher of great eloquence. 
Every morning, after their early coffee, the poet was ofif 
for a brisk walk, and after returning he busied himself 
with his letters and newspapers, his mail always contain- 
ing more or less letters from strangers and admirers, some 
of whom solicited autographs, which, so far as possible, 
he always granted. Mrs. Bronson has somewhere noted that 
when asked, viva voce, for an autograph, he would look 
puzzled, and say "I don't like to always write the same 
verse, but I can only remember one," and he would then 
proceed to copy "All that I know of a certain star," which, 
however it "dartles red and blue," he knew nothing of 
save that it had "opened its soul" to him. Arthur Rogers, 
delivering the Bohlen lectures for 1909, compared Brown- 
ing with Isaiah, in his lecture on " Poetry and Prophecy," 



274 THE BROWNINGS 

and he instanced this "star" which "opened its soul " to 
the poet, as attesting that Browning, like Isaiah, could do 
no more than search depths of life. 

The Palazzo Giustiniani-Recanti was a fitting haunt for 
a poet. Casa Alvisi, adjoining, in which Mrs. Bronson 
lived, looked out, as has been noted, on Santa Maria della 
Salute, which was on the opposite side of the Grand Canal ; 
but the Giustiniani palace, dating to the fifteenth century, 
had its outlook through Gothic windows to the south, on a 
court and garden of romantic loveliness. The perfect tact 
of their hostess left the poet and his sister entirely free 
to come and go as they pleased, and at midday they took 
their dejeuner together, ordering by preference Italian 
dishes, as rissotto, macaroni, and fruits, especially figs 
and grapes. They enjoyed these tete-a-tete repasts, 
talking and laughing all the while, and then, about three 
every afternoon they joined Mrs. Bronson and her daughter 
for the gondola trip. The hostess records that the poet's 
invariable response to the question as to where they should 
go would be; "Anywhere, all is beautiful, only let it be 
toward the Lido." While both the poet and his sister 
were scrupulously prompt in returning all calls of ceremony, 
they were glad to evade formal visits so far as possible; 
and the absolute freedom with which their hostess sur- 
rounded them was grateful beyond words. "The thought 
deeply impressed me," said Mrs. Bronson, "that one who 
had lifted so many souls above the mere necessity for 
living in a troublesome world deserved from those per- 
mitted to approach him their best efforts to brighten his 
personal life. . . . The little studies for his comfort, the 
small cares entailed upon me during the too brief days 
and weeks when his precious life was partly entrusted to 
my care, might seem to count for little in an existence 
far removed from that of an ordinary man; yet, as a fact, 
he was glad and grateful for the smallest attention. He 




Mrs. Arthur Bronson 
From a paiating by Ellen Montalba, in Asolo 
la the possession of Editta, Contessa Rucellai (nee Bronson), 
Palazzp Rucellai, Florence. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 275 

was appreciative of all things. He never regarded grati- 
tude as a burden, as less generous minds are apt to do," 
continued Mrs. Bronson. 

One of his greatest enjoyments in Venice was to wander 
with Edith Bronson through the Venetian calli. "Edith 
is the best cicerone in the world," he would remark; "she 
knows everything and teaches me all she knows. There 
never was such a guide." The young girl indeed knew 
her Venice as a devotee knows his illuminated missal, 
and her lovely vivacity and sweetness must have invested 
her presence with the same charm that is felt to-day in 
the Contessa Rucellai, in her Florentine palace, for Miss 
Bronson, it may be said en passant, became the wife of one 
of the most eminent Itahan nobles, the Rucellai holding 
peculiar claim to distinction even among the princely 
houses of Florence. 

From these gondola excursions they always returned about 
five, and sometimes the poet would join the group around 
Mrs. Bronson's tea-table, conversing with equal facility in 
French, German, or Itahan, and to their deUght would 
say, "Edith, dear, you may give me a cup of tea." But as 
a rule he considered this beverage as too unhygienic at that 
hour, and whenever with an " Excuse me, please," he sought 
his own apartments, he was never questioned for his reasons. 
"It was enough that he wished it," said his hostess. He and 
Miss Browning always appeared promptly for dinner, which 
was at half-past seven in Casa Alvisi. The poet was scru- 
pulous about his evening dress; and Miss Browning, Mrs. 
Bronson relates, was habitually clad "in rich gowns of a 
somber tint, with quaint, antique jewels, and each day 
with a different French cap of daintiest make." 

The evenings seem to have been idyllic. Browning would 
often read aloud, and he loved to improvise on an old spinnet 
standing in a dim recess in one of the salons. The great 
Venetian families were usually in villeggiatura at the time 



276 THE BROWNINGS 

when Browning was in Venice, so that he met compara- 
tively few of them; it was this freedom from social obliga- 
tions that contributed so much to the restful character of 
his sojourns, and enabled him to give himself up to that 
ineffable enchantment of Venice. He made a few friends, 
however, among Mrs. Bronson's brilliant circle, and one 
of the notable figures among these was the old Russian 
noble and diplomat, Prince Gagarin, who, born in Rome, had 
been educated in his own country, and had represented 
Russia at the courts of Athens, Constantinople, and Turin. 
Mrs. Bronson has told the story of one evening when the 
poet and the old diplomat indulged in a mutual tourna- 
ment of music; '"first one would sing, and then the other," 
Browning recalHng folk-songs of Russia which he had caught 
up in his visit to that country fifty years before. 

Another of Mrs. Bronson's inner circle, which included 
the Principessa Montenegro, the mother of Queen Elena, 
and other notable figures, was the Contessa Marcello, whom 
both the poet and his sister greatly liked; and one radiant 
day they all accepted an invitation to visit the Contessa 
at her villa at Mogliano, a short railway trip from Venice. 
The poet seemed to much enjoy the brief journey, and at 
the station was the Contessa with her landau, in which 
Mrs. Bronson, the poet, and his sister were seated, while 
Miss Bronson rode one of the ponies on which some of the 
young people had come down to greet the guests. After 
luncheon the Contessa, with her young daughter, the Con- 
tessina, led their guests out in the grounds to a pergola 
where coffee was served, and which commanded a vista 
of a magnificent avenue of copper beeches, whose great 
branches met and interlaced overhead. The Contessa was 
the favorite lady of honor at the court of Queen Margherita, 
and she interested Mr. Browning very much by speaking 
of her beloved royal mistress, and showing him some of the 
handwriting of the Queen, which he thought characteris- 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 277 

tically graceful and forcible. The Contessina and MissBron- 
son, with others of the younger people, seated themselves in 
rustic chairs to listen to every word from the poet; and a 
Venetian sculptor, who was there, concealed himself in the 
shrubbery and made a sketch of Browning. The Contessina, 
who, like all the young Italian girls of high breeding and 
culture, kept an album of foreign poetry, brought hers, and 
pleadingly asked Mr. Browning if he would write in it for 
her. As usual, for the reasons already given, he (perforce) 
wrote "My Star," and when the girl looked at it she ex- 
claimed that it was one of her old favorites, and showed 
him where she had already copied it into the book. 

At the station, when they drove down again to take the 
returning train, one of the young literati of Italy was there, 
and the Contessa introduced him to Browning, saying that 
the young man had already achieved distinction in letters. 
Mr. Browning talked with him most cordially, and after 
they were on their way he said that the young writer 
"seemed to be a youth of promise, and that he hoped he 
should meet him again." But when they did hear of him 
again it was as the lecturer of a series of talks on Zola, 
"which, as may be supposed," notes Mrs. Bronson, "the 
poet expressed no desire to attend." The marvelous days 
of that unearthly loveliness of Venice in the early autumn 
flew by, and Mrs. Bronson's guest returned to DeVere 
Gardens. To his hostess the poet wrote, under date of 
DeVere Gardens, December 15, 1888: 

Dearest Friend, — I may just say that and no more; for 
what can I say? I shall never have your kindness out of my 
thoughts, — and you never will forget me, I know. We shall 
please you by telling you our journey was quite prosperous, and 
wonderfully fine weather, till it ended in grim London, and its 
fog and cold. (At Basle there was cold, but the sun made up 
for everything.) We altered our plans so far as to sleep and to 
stay through a long day at Basle, visiting the museum, cathedral, 



278 THE BROWNINGS 

etc., and went on by night train in a sleeping-car, of which we 
were the sole occupants, to Calais, directly. At Dover the offi- 
cials were prepared for us, would not look at the luggage, and 
were very helpful as well as courteous; and at London orders 
had been given to treat us with all possible good nature. They 
would n't let us open any box but that where the lamp was 
packed; offered to take our word for its weight, and finally 
asked me, " since there were the three portions, would I accept 
the weight of the little vessel at bottom as that of the other 
two?" "Rather," as Pen says, so they declined to weigh the 
whole lamp, charging less than a quarter of what it does weigh, 
and even then requiring assurance that I was " quite satisfied." 
We were to be looked after first of all the passengers, and so 
got away early enough to find things at home in excellent order, 
. , , I send a hasty line to try to express the impossible, — how 
much I love you, and how deeply I feel all your great kindness. 
Every hour of the day I miss you, and wish I were with you and 
dear Edith again, in beloved Casa Alvisi. 

These letters to Mrs. Bronson reveal Browning the man 
as do no other records in literature. The consciousness of 
being perfectly understood, and the realization of the deli- 
cacy and beauty of the character of Mrs, Bronson made 
this choice companionship one of the greatest joys in Brown- 
ing's life. It may, perhaps, as well be interpolated here 
that a large package of the fascinating letters from Robert 
Browning to Mrs. Bronson, from which these extracts are 
made, were placed at the disposal of the writer of this vol- 
ume by the generous kindness of Mrs. Bronson's daughter, 
the Contessa Rucellai, and with the slight exception of a 
few paragraphs used by Mrs. Bronson herself (in two charm- 
ing papers that she wrote on Browning), they have never 
before been drawn upon for publication. 

Under the date of January 4, 1889, the poet writes to 
Mrs. Bronson: 

No, dearest friend, I can well believe you think of me some- 
times, even oft-times, for in what place, or hour, or hour of the 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 279 

day, can you fail to be reminded of some piece of kindness done 
by you and received by me during those memorable three months 
when you cared for me and my sister constantly, and were so 
successful in your endeavor to make us perfectly happy. De- 
pend on it, neither I nor she move about this house (which has 
got to be less familiar to us through our intimate acquaintance 
with yours), — neither of us forget you for a moment, nor are 
we without your name on our lips much longer, when we sit 
quietly down at home of an evening, and talk over the pleas- 
antest of pleasant days. . . . 

The sole invitation I can but accept this morning is to the 
Farewell dinner about to be given by the Lord Mayor to Mr. 
Phelps; that I am bound to attend. I have not seen him or Mrs. 
Phelps yet; but they receive this afternoon, and if I am able I 
shall go. You will wish to know that all our articles have arrived 
safely, and more expeditiously than we had expected. The 
tables, lanterns, etc., are very decidedly approved of, and fit 
into the proper corners very comfortably; so that everywhere 
will be an object reminding us, however unnecessarily, of Venice. 
Your ink-stand brightens the table by my hand; the lamp will 
probably stand beside it; while Tassini tempts me to dip into 
him every time I pass the book-case. I may never see the loved 
city again, but where in the house will not some little incident 
of the then unparalleled months, wake up memories of the gon- 
dola, and the stopping, here and there, and the fun at Morchio's ; 
the festive return home, behind broad-backed Luigi; then the 
tea, and the dinner, and Gargarin's crusty old port flavor, and 
the Dyers, and Ralph Curtis, and 0, the delightful times! Of 
Edith I say nothing because she has herself, the darling! writ- 
ten to me, the surprise and joy of that! And I mean to have a 
talk with her on paper, alas! my very self, and induce her not 
to let me have the last word. Oh, my two beloveds I must see 
Venice again; it would be heart-breaking to believe otherwise. 
Of course I entered into all your doings, the pretty things you 
got, and prettier, I am sure, you gave. And I was sorry, so 
sorry, to hear that naughty Edith, no darling, for half a second, 
now I think of it, — did not figure in the tableaux. I hope and 
believe, however, she did dance in the New Year. Bid her 



28o THE BROWNINGS 

avoid this cold-catching and consequent headache. Do write, 
dearest friend, keep me au courant of everything. No minutest 
of your doings but is full of interest to me and Sarianna. But 
I am at the paper's extreme edge. Were it elephant folio (is 
there such a size?) it would not hold all I have in my heart, 
and head, too, of love for you and " our Edie; " so, simply, God 
bless you, my beloveds! 

Robert Browning. 

Princess Montenegro sent me by way of a New Year's 
card, — what do you think? A pretty photograph of the 
Rezzonico. The young lady was equally mindful of Sarianna. 

R. B. 

To Miss Edith Bronson the poet wrote, as follows: 

Dearest Edie, — I did not reply to your letter at once for 
this reason; an immediate answer might seem to imply I ex- 
pected such a delightful surprise every day, or week, or even 
month; and it was wise economy to let you know that I can 
go on without a second piece of kindness till you again have 
such a good imptdse and yield to it — by no means binding 
yourself to give me regularly such a pleasure. You shall owe 
me nothing, but be as generous as is consistent with justice to 
other people. ... I did not go out except to the complimentary 
farewell dinner our Lord Mayor gave to Mr. Phelps which no- 
body could be excused from attending. We all grieved at the 
loss, especially of Mrs. Phelps, who endeared herself to every- 
body. Both of them were sorry to go from us. . . . 

The next letter reveals anew Browning's always thought- 
ful courtesy in bespeaking kindness for mutual friends, as 
he writes: 

"There is arranged to be a sort of expedition [to Venice] of 
young Toynbee Hall men, headed by Alberto Ball, the son of 
our common friend, for the purpose of studying, not merely 
amusing, themselves with, — the beloved city. Well as the Balls 
are entitled to say that they know you, still, the young and clever 
Ball chooses to wish me to beg your kind notice; and I suppose 




Miss Edith Bronson, 
(now Contessa Rucellai) 
From a Water-Color by Passini, Venicj, 1SS3. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 281 

that his companions are to be noticed also, — of what really 
appears to be a praiseworthy efifort after self-instruction. Will 
you smile on him when he calls on you? for his father's sake, 
who is anxious about the scheme's success? I have bespoken 
Pen's assistance, and he will do the honors of the Rezzonico 
with alacrity, I have no doubt." 

In almost every life that is strongly individualized those 
who look back after it has passed from visible sight cannot 
but recognize how rhythmic are the sequences that have 
characterized its last months on earth. If the person in 
question had actually known the day on which he should be 
called away, he would hardly have done other than he did. 
It is as if the spirit had some prescience, not reahzed by the 
ordinary consciousness, but still controlling its conduct of 
the last time allotted here. With this last year of Robert 
Browning's life, this unseen leading is especially obvious. 
In the spring he had revised his poetic work; he had passed 
Commemoration week at Oxford, as he loved to do; he 
had passed much of the time with his friend, the Master of 
Balliol, and among his last expressions on leaving Oxford 
was "Jowett knows how I love him." He was also in 
Cambridge, and Edmund Gosse has charmingly recalled 
the way in which he dwelt, retrospectively, on his old 
Italian days. 

In June, also, he paid his usual visit to Lord Albemarle 
(the last survivor of those who fought at Waterloo), and 
in that month he wrote to Professor Knight, who was 
about to exchange the Chair of Philosophy at the Univer- 
sity of Glasgow for that of Literature at St. Andrews, 
saying: "It is the right order; Philosophy first, and Poetry, 
which is its highest outcome, afterward, and much harm 
has been done by reversing the usual process." 

The letters to Mrs. Bronson tell much of the story of 
these days. In one, dated June 10, 1899, he gives this 
reminiscence of Asolo: 



282 THE BROWNINGS 

Dearest Friend, — It was indeed a joy to get your letter. 
I know that a change of place would be desirable for you, 
darling Edie told me so, but I fancied you would not leave 
Venice so soon. . . . 

. . . One thing is certain, that if I do go to Venice, and 
abide at the Rezzonico, every day during the visit I shall pass 
over to the beloved Alvisi and entirely beloved friends there, 
who are to me in Venice what San Marco is to the Piazza. 
Enough of this now, and something about Asolo. 

When I first found out Asolo, I lodged at the main hotel 
in the Square, — an old, large inn of the most primitive kind. 
The ceiling of my bed-room was traversed by a huge crack, or 
rather cleft, caused by the earthquake last year; the sky was 
as blue as blue could be, and we were all praying in the fields, 
expecting the town to tumble in. On the morning after my 
arrival, I walked up to the Rocca; and on returning to breakfast 
I mentioned it to the land-lady, wherein a respectable middle- 
aged man, sitting by, said: " You have done what I, born here, 
never thought of doing." I took long walks every day, and 
carried away a lively recollection of the general beauty, but 
I did not write a word of 'Pippa Passes " — that idea struck 
me when walking in an English wood, and I made use of Italian 
memories. 

I used to dream of seeing Asolo in the distance and making 
vain attempts to reach it — repeatedly dreamed this for many 
a year. And when I found myself once more in Italy, with 
Sarianna, I went there straight from Venice. We found the 
old inn lying in ruins, a new one (being) built, to take its place, 
— I suppose that which you see now. We went to a much in- 
ferior albergo, the best then existing, and were roughly, but 
pleasantly, entertained for a week, as I say. People told me 
the number of inhabitants had greatly increased, and things 
seemed generally more ordinary and life-like. I am happy 
that you like it so much. When I got my impression, Italy was 
new to me. . . . 

... I shall go to Oxford for Commemoration, and stay a 
week for another affair, — a " gaudy " dinner given to the mag- 
nates of Eton. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 283 

To the forthcoming collection, entitled "Asolando," the 
group of poems dedicated to Mrs. Bronson, the poet al- 
ludes as follows: 

... By the way the new little book of poems that was to 
associate your name with mine, remains unprinted. For why? 
The publishers think its announcement might panic-strike the 
purchasers of the new edition, who have nearly enough of me 
for some time to come ! Never mind. We shall have our innings. 

Bless you ever and your Edith; keep me in mind as your 
very own always affectionate 

R. B. 

The poet's love for Asolo is revealed in the following 
letter to Mrs. Bronson: 

29, DeVere Gardens, W. 
July 17, '89. 

Dearest Friend, — I shall delight in fancying your life 
at Asolo, my very own of all Italian towns; your house 
built into the wall, and the neighboring castle ruins, and the 
wonderful outlook; on a clear day you can see much further 
than Venice. I mentioned some of the dear spots pointed out 
to my faith as ruins, while what wants no faith at all, — the 
green hills surrounding you, Posagno close by, — how you will 
enjoy it ! And do go there and get all the good out of the beau- 
tiful place I used to dream about so often in old days, till at 
last I saw it again, and the dreams stopped, — to begin, again, 
I trust, with a figure there never associated with Asolo before. 
Shall I ever see you there in no dream? I cannot say; I feel 
inclined to leave England this next autumn that is so soon to 
overtake us. . . . 

Pen stays a few days longer in Paris to complete his picture. 
He had declined to compete at the Exposition, but has been 
awarded a Medal (3rd), which, however, enables him to dis- 
pense with the permission of the Salon that his works shall be 
received. Julian Story gets also a medal of the same class. 
Pen reports stupendously of the Paris show. . . . 

. . . Well, you know we have been entertaining and enter- 



284 THE BROWNINGS 

tained by the Shah. I met him at Lord Roseberry's. and before 
dinner was presented to him, when he asked me in French: 
" Etes-vous poete? " " On s^est permis de le dire guelquefois." 
*'Ei vous avez fait des livres? " " Plusieurs livres? " " Trop de 
livres." " Voulez-vous m'en faire le cadeau d'un de vos livres afin 
que je puisse me ressouvenir de vous? " " Avec plaisir." Ac- 
cordingly I went next day to a shop where they keep them 
ready bound, and chose a brightly covered " selection." . . . 

All the outing I have accomplished was a week at Oxford, 
which was a quiet one, — Jowett's health, I fear, not allowing 
the usual invitation of guests to Balliol. I had all the more of 
him, to my great satisfaction. 

Sarianna is quite in her ordinary health, but tired as we 
cannot but be. She is away from the house, but I know how 
much she would have me put in of love in what I would say for 
her, . . . Did you get a Uttle book by Michael Field? " Long 
Ago," a number of poems written to innestare what fragmen- 
tary lines and words we have left of Sappho's poetry. I want 
to know particularly how they strike you. 

To Tennyson for his eightieth birthday Mr. Browning 
writes: 

To-morrow is your birthday, indeed a memorable one. Let 
me say I associate myself with the universal pride of our coun- 
try in your glory, and in its hope that for many and many a 
year we may have your very self among us; secure that your 
poetry will be a wonder and delight to all those appointed to 
come after; and for my own part let me further say, I have 
loved you dearly. May God bless you and yours! I have 
had disastrous experience. . . . Admiringly and Affectionately 
yours, 

Robert Browning.^ 

To this letter Lord Tennyson replied : 

Aldworth, August, 1889. 
My Dear Browning, — I thank you with my whole heart 
and being for your noble and affectionate letter, and with my 

^ Alfred Lord Tennyson. London and New York: The Macmillan Co. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 285 

whole heart and being I return your friendship. To be loved 
and appreciated by so great and powerful a nature as yours 
will be a solace to me, and lighten my dark hours during the 
short time of life that is left to us. 

Ever Yours, 

A. Tennyson. 

The poet found himself again longing for his Italy. To 
Mrs. Bronson, under date of August 8, he wrote, referring 
to a letter of hers received two days before, crowned with 
"the magical stamp of Asolo": 

" . . . So a fancy springs up which shall have utterance as 
just a fancy. The time has come for determining on some change 
of place, if change is ever to be, and, I repeat, just a fancy, if 
I were inclined to join you at Asolo, say a fortnight hence, 
could good rooms be procurable for Sarianna and myself? Now 
as you value — I won't say my love, but my respect and esteem 
— understand me literally, and give me only the precise in- 
formation I want — not one half-syllable about accommodation 
in your house! 

"I ask because when I and Sarianna went there years ago, 
the old Locanda on the Square lay in ruins, and we put up at a 
rougher inn in the town's self. I dare say the principal hotel is 
rebuilt by this time, or rather has grown somewhat old. Proba- 
bly you are there indeed. Just tell us exactly. Pen is trying his 
best to entice us his way, which means to Primiero and Venice; 
but the laziness of age is subduing me, and how I shrink from 
the 'middle passage,' — all that day and night whirling from 
London to Basle, with the eleven or twelve hours to Milan. 
Milan opens on Paradise, but the getting to Milan! Perhaps 
I shall turn northward and go to Scotland after all. Still, dear 
and good one, tell me what I ask. After the requisite informa- 
tion you will please tell me accurately how you are, how that 
wicked gad-a-bout, Edith, is, and where; and what else you 
can generously afford of news, — news Venetian, I mean. . . ." 

Later the poet writes: 



286 THE BROWNINGS 

"... I trust that as few clouds as may be may trouble the 
blue of our month at Asolo; I shall bring your book full of verses 
for a final overhauling on the spot where, when I first saw it, 
inspiration seemed to steam up from the very ground. 

"And so Edith is (I conjecture, I hope, rightly) to be with 
you; won't I show her the little ridge in the ruin where one 
talks to the echo to greatest advantage." 

From Milan Browning wrote to Mrs. Bronson: 

Dearest Friend, — It is indeed a delight to expect a meeting 
so soon. Be good and mindful of how simple our tastes and 
wants are, and how they have been far more than satisfied by 
the half of what you provided to content them. I shall have 
nothing to do but to enjoy your company, not even the little 
business of improving my health since that seems perfect. I 
hear you do not walk as in the old days. I count upon setting 
that right again. O Venezia, benedetta! 

It was with greater enjoyment, apparently, than ever 
before even, that Mr. Browning turned to the Asolo of his 
"Pippa Passes" and "Sordello." Mrs. Bronson, in her 
brilliant and sympathetic picturing of the poet, speaks of 
his project "to raise a tower like Pippa's near a certain 
property in Asolo, where he and Miss Browning might pass 
at least a part of every year." The "certain property," to 
which Mrs. Bronson so modestly alludes, was her own place, 
"La Mura." The tower has since been erected by the 
poet's son, and the dream is thus fulfilled, though the elder 
Browning did not live to see it. Mrs. Bronson describes 
his enjoyment of nature in this lovely little hill-town, — 
"the ever-changing cloud shadows on the plain, the ranges 
of many-tinted mountains in the distance, and the fairy- 
like outline of the blue Euganean Hills, which form in part 
the southern boundary of the vast Campagna." Browning 
would speak of the associations which these hills bear with 
the names of Shelley and Byron. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 287 

Across the deep ravine from La Mura a ruined tower 
was all that remained of the villa of Queen Catarina Cor- 
naro, who, when she lost Cyprus, retired to Asolo; and in 
Browning's dedication to Mrs. Bronson of his "Asolando," 
he ascribes the title to Cardinal Bembo, the secretary of 
Queen Catarina. Mr. Browning loved to recall the tradi- 
tions of that poetic little court, which for two decades was 
held within those walls, whose decay was fairly hidden by 
the wealth of flowers that embowered them. Of his own 
project he would talk, declaring that he would call it 
*'Pippa's Tower," and that it should be so built that from 
it he could see Venice every day. He playfully described 
the flag-signals that should aid communication between 
"Pippa's Tower" and Casa Alvisi. "A telephone is too 
modern," he said; and explained that when he asked his 
friend to dine the flag should be blue, — her favorite color; 
and if her answer was yes, her flag should be the same color; 
or if no, her flag should be red. This last visit of the poet 
to his city of dream and vision seemed to Mrs. Bronson 
one of unalloyed pleasure. "To think that I should be 
here again!" he more than once exclaimed, as if with an 
unconscious recognition that these weeks were to complete 
the cycle of his life on earth. Asolo is thirty-four miles 
from Venice, and it is within easy driving distance of Pos- 
sagno, the native place of Canova, in whose memory the 
town has a museum filled with his works and casts. "Pen 
must see this," remarked Mr. Browning, as he lingered 
over the statues and groups and tombs. Mrs. Bronson 
records that one day on returning from a drive to Bassano 
the poet was strangely silent, and no one spoke; finally he 
announced that he had written a poem since they left 
Bassano. In response to an exclamation of surprise he 
said: "Oh, it's all in my head, but I shall write it out pres- 
ently." His hostess asked if he would not even say what 
inspired it, to which he returned: 



288 THE BROWNINGS 

"Well, the birds twittering in the trees suggested it. 
You know I don't like women to wear those things in their 
bonnets." The poem in question proved to be "The Lady 
and the Painter." 

Mr. Browning took the greatest enjoyment in the view 
from Mrs. Bronson's loggia. *'Here," he would say, "we 
can enjoy beauty without fatigue, and be protected from 
sun, wind, and rain." His hostess has related that its 
charm made him often break his abstemious habit of re- 
fusing the usual five o'clock refreshment, and that he 
" loved to hear the hissing urn," and when occasionally ac- 
cepting a cup of tea and a biscuit would say, "I think I am 
the better for this delicious tea, after all." 

Every afternoon at three they all went to drive, explor- 
ing the region in all directions. The driving in Asolo 
seemed to charm him as did the gondola excursions in 
Venice. "He observed everything," said Mrs. Bronson, 
** hedges, trees, the fascination of the little river Musone, 
the great carri piled high with white and purple grapes. 
He removed his hat in returning the salutation of a priest, 
and touched his hat in returning the salutation of the 
poorest peasant, who, after the manner of the country, 
lifted his own to greet the passing stranger. 'I always 
salute the church,' Mr. Browning would say; *I respect it.' " 

All his Hfe Browning was an early riser. In Asolo, as 
elsewhere, he began his day with a cold bath at seven, 
and. at eight he and his sister sat down to their simple 
breakfast, their hostess keeping no such heroic hours. Mrs. 
Bronson had adopted the foreign fashion of having her 
light breakfast served in her room, and her mornings were 
given to her wide correspondence and her own reading and 
study. She was a most accompHshed and scholarly woman, 
whose goodness of heart and charm of manner were paral- 
leled by her range of intellectual interests and her grasp 
of affairs. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 289 

After breakfasting Browning and his sister, inseparable 
companions always, would start off on their wanderings 
over the hills. The poet was keenly interested in searching 
out the points of interest of his early years in Asolo; the 
"echo," the remembered views, the vista whose fascina- 
tion still remained for him. From the ruined rocca that 
crowned the hill, the view comprised all the violet-hued 
plain, stretching away to Padua, Vicenzo, Bassano; the 
entire atmosphere filled with historic and poetic associations 
How the poet mirrored the panorama in his stanzas: 

"How many a year, my Asolo, 

Since — one step just from sea to land — 
I found you, loved yet feared you so — 

For natural objects seemed to stand 
Palpably fire-clothed ! No — " 

The "lambent flame," and "Italia's r^re, o'er-running 
beauty," enchanted his vision. 

Returning from their saunterings, the brother and sister 
took up their morning reading of English and French 
newspapers, Italian books, with the poet's interludes always 
of his beloved Greek dramatists. 

In these October days the Storys arrived to visit Mrs. 
Bronson in her picturesque abode. An ancient wall, 
mostly in ruins, with eighteen towers, still surrounds Asolo, 
and partly in one of these towers, and partly in the arch 
of the old portal, "La Mura" was half discovered and half 
constructed. Its loggia had one wall composed entirely 
of sliding glass, which could be a shelter from the storm 
with no obstruction of the view, or be thrown open to all 
the bloom and beauty of the radiant summer. Just across 
the street was the apartment in which Mrs. Bronson 
bestowed her guests. 

That Browning and Story should thus be brought to- 
gether again for their last meeting on earth, however 
undreamed of to them, prefigures itself now as another 



290 THE BROWNINGS 

of those mosaic-like events that combined in beauty and 
loveliness to make all his last months on earth a poetic 
sequence. The Storys afterward spoke of Mr. Browning 
as being "well, and in such force, brilliant, and delightful 
as ever"; and the last words that passed between the poet 
and the sculptor were these of Browning's: "We have been 
friends for forty years, forty years without a break!" 

On the first day of November this perfect and final 
visit to Asolo ended, and yielding to the entreaties of his 
son. Browning and his sister bade farewell to Mrs. Bronson 
and her daughter, who were soon to follow them to Venice, 
where the poet and Miss Browning were to be the guests 
of the Barrett Brownings in Palazzo Rezzonico. 

The events of all these weeks seem divinely appointed 
to complete with stately symmetry this noble life. As 
one of them he found in Venice his old friend, and (as has 
before been said) the greatest interpreter of his poetry, 
Dr. Hiram Corson. The Cornell professor was taking his 
University Sabbatical year, and with Mrs. Corson had 
arrived in Venice just before the poet came down from 
Asolo. "I called on him the next day," Dr. Corson said 
of this meeting. "He seemed in his usual vigor, and ex- 
pressed great pleasure in the restorations his son was making 
in the palace. * It 's a grand edifice,' he said, ' but too vast.' " 

Dr. Corson continued: 

"He was then engaged in reading the proofs of his * Asolando.' 
He usually walked two hours every day; went frequently in his 
gondola with his sister to his beloved Lido, and one day when 
I walked with him 

'Where St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings,* 

I had to quicken my steps to keep pace with him. He called 
my attention to an interesting feature of this world-renowned 
place, and told me much of their strange history. He knew the 
city literally par coeur.'" 




Professor Hiram Corson 

From a painting by J. Colin Forbes, R. A. 
the possession of Eugene Rollin Corson. 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 291 

Mr. Browning passed with Dr. and Mrs. Corson the last 
morning they were in Venice. Of the parting Dr. Corson 
has since written in a personal letter to a friend : 

"He told us much about himself; about Asolo, which he had 
first visited more than fifty years before, during his visit to 
Italy in 1838, when, as he says in the Prologue to 'Asolando,' 
alluding to * the burning bush,' 

' Natural objects seemed to stand 
Palpably fire-clothed.' 

"A servant announcing that the gondola had come to take 
us to the railway station, he rose from his chair, and said, ' Now 
be sure to visit me next May, in London. You'll remember 
where my little house is in De Vere Gardens'; and bidding us a 
cordial good-bye, with a 'God bless you both,' he hastened 
away. We little thought, full of life as he then was, that we 
should see him no more in this world." 

To a letter from Miss Browning to their hostess, Brown- 
ing added: 

Dearest Mrs. Bronson, — I am away from you in one sense, 
never to be away from the thought of you, and your inexpres- 
sible kindness. I trust you will see your way to returning soon. 
Venice is not herself without you, in my eyes — I dare say this 
is a customary phrase, but you well know what reason I have 
to use it, with a freshness as if it were inspired for the first 
time. Come, bringing news of Edith, and the doings in the 
house, and above all of your own health and spirits and so 
rejoice 

Ever your affectionate 

Robert Browning. 

With another letter of his sister's to their beloved friend 
and hostess, Mr. Browning sent the following note, — 
perhaps the last lines that he ever wrote to Mrs. Bronson, 
as she returned almost immediately to Casa Alvisi, and 



292 THE BROWNINGS 

the daily personal intercourse renewed itself to be broken 
only by his illness and death. The poet wrote: 

Palazzo Rezzonico, Nov. 5th, 1889. 

Dearest Friend, — A word to slip into the letter of Sarianna, 
which I cannot see go without a scrap of mine. (Come and see 
Pen and you will easily concert things with him.) I have all 
confidence in his knowledge and power. 

I delight in hearing how comfortably all is proceeding with 
you at La Mura. I want to say that having finished the first 
tyfo volumes of Gozzi, I brought the third with me to finish 
at my leisure and return to you; and particularly I may mention 
that the edition is very rare and valuable. It appears that 
Symmonds has just thought it worth while to translate the 
work, and he was six months finding a copy to translate from! 

... I have got — since three or four days — the whole 
of my new volume in type, and expect to send it back, corrected, 
by to-morrow at latest. But I must continue at my work lest 
interruptions occur, so, bless you and good-bye in the truest 
sense, dear one! 

Ever Your Affectionately 

Robert Browning. 

The "new volume in type" to which he referred was 
his collection entitled "Asolando," all of which, with the 
exception of one poem, had been written within the last 
two years of his life. 

Mr. Barrett Browning relates that while his father was 
reading aloud these last proofs to himself and his wife, the 
poet paused over the " Epilogue," at the stanza — 

"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, 
Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong woiild triumph. 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better. 
Sleep to wake." 

and remarked: "It almost seems like praising myself to 
say this, and yet it is true, the simple truth, and so I shall 
not cancel it." 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 293 

November, often lovely in Venice, was singularly sum- 
mer-like that year. On one day Mr. Browning found the 
heat on the Lido "scarcely endurable," indeed, but "snow- 
tipped Alps" revealed themselves in the distance, offering 
a strange contrast to the brilHant sunshine and the soft 
blue skies. Still November is not June, after all, however 
perfect the imitation of some of its days. One day there 
was a heavy fog on his favorite Lido, and the poet, who 
refused to be deprived of his walk, became thoroughly 
chilled and illness followed. The following note from Mr. 
Barrett Browning to Mrs. Bronson indicates the anxiety 
that prevailed in Palazzo Rezzonico, where the tenderest 
care of his son and daughter-in-law ministered to the poet. 
The note is undated, save by the day of the week. 

Palazzo Rezzonico, 
9 o'clock, Monday Evening. 

Dearest Mrs. Bronson, — The improvement of last night 
is scarcely maintained this morning, — the action of the heart 
being weaker at moments. He is quite clear-headed, and is 
never tired of saying he feels better, " immensely better, — I 
don't suppose I could get up and walk about, in fact I know 
I could not, but I have no aches or pains, — quite comfortable, 
could not be more so," — this is what he said a moment ago. 

I will let you know if there is any change as the day goes on. 
My love to you. 

Yours, Pen. 

The delightful relations that had always prevailed 
between the poet and his publishers were touchingly 
completed when, just before he breathed his last, came 
a telegram from George Murray Smith with its tidings of 
the interest with which "Asolando" was being received 
in England. And then this little note written on that 
memorable date of December 12, 1889, from Barrett 
Browning to Mrs. Bronson, tells the story of the poet's 
entrance on the new life. 



294 THE BROWNINGS 

Palazzo Rezzonico, 

10.30 p. M. 

Dearest Friend, — Our Beloved breathed his last as San 
Marco's clock struck ten, — without pain — unconsciously. 

I was able to make him happy a little before he became 
unconscious by a telegram from Smith saying, " Reviews in all 
this day's papers most favorable, edition nearly exhausted." 

He just murmured, "How gratifying." 

Those were his last intelligible words. 

^Yours, Pen. 

In that hour how could the son and the daughter who 
so loved him remember aught save the exquisite lines 
with which the poet had anticipated the reunion with 
his "Lyric Love": 

"Then a light, then thy breast, 
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, 
And with God be the rest! " 

In the grand sala with its floor of black Italian marble 
and its lofty ceiling with exquisite fresco decoration, the 
simple and impressive service was held in Palazzo Rez- 
zonico, and a fleet of gondolas, filled with friends and 
accompanied by the entire Venetian Syndic, bore the casket 
to its temporary resting-place in the chapel of San Michele, 
in the campo santo. The gondola that carried the casket 
had an angel, carved in wood, at the prow, and a lion at 
the stern. Dean Bradley, on behalf of Westminster 
Abbey, had telegraphed to Robert Barrett Browning, 
asking that the body of the poet might be laid within those 
honored walls; and as the cemetery in Florence wherein 
is Mrs. Browning's tomb had long been closed, this honor 
from England was accepted. The same honor of a final 
resting-place in Westminster Abbey was also extended 
for the removal of the body of Mrs. Browning, but their 
son rightly felt that he must yield to the wishes of Florence 



THEIR LIFE AND ART 295 

that her tomb be undisturbed, and it is fitting that it 
should remain in the Italy she so loved. 

So associated with her brother's life was Miss Sarianna 
Browning that the story would be incomplete not to add 
that she survived him many years, — a gracious and 
beloved presence. In the January following the poet's 
death, she said in a letter to Mrs. Bronson: 

" I have already let a day pass without thanking you for the 
most beautiful locket, which I love even more for your sake than 
his. I shall always think of you, so good, so near, and so dearly 
loved by him. All your watchfulness over our smallest comfort, 
— how he felt it! . . . Bless you forever for all the joy you 
gave him at Asolo, — how happy he was! And how you were 
entwined in all our plans for the happy future we were to enjoy 
there! Think of him when you go back, as loving the whole 
place, and yourself, the embodiment of its sweetness." 

Miss Browning died in her nephew's home. La Torre 
Air Antella, near Florence, in the spring of 1903, in her 
ninetieth year. 

On the facade of the Palazzo Rezzonico the City of 
Venice placed this inscription to the memory of the poet: 

A 

ROBERTO BROWNING 

MORTO IN QUESTO PALAZZO 

IL 12 DiCEMBRE, 1889 

VENEZIA 

POSE 

"Open my heart and you will see 
Graved inside of it, — 'Italy'" 

It was on the last day of 1889 that the impressive rites 
were held in Westminster Abbey for Robert Browning. 
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dean of Windsor, an 
aid-de-camp representing Queen Victoria, Dean Bradley, 
the sub-dean, and many eminent canons, and Sir Frederick 



296 THE BROWNINGS 

Bridge, of the Abbey choir, all were present among the 
officiating clergy. The casket under its purple pall, with 
a massive cross of violets, and wreaths of lilies-of-the 
valley, and white roses (Mrs. Browning's favorite flower), 
was followed by the honorary pall-bearers including 
Hallam Tennyson, representing the Poet Laureate (whose 
health did not permit him to be present). Archdeacon 
Farrar, the Master of Balliol (representing Oxford), the 
Master of Trinity (representing Cambridge), Professor 
Masson (representing the University of Edinburgh), and 
George Murray Smith. The committal service was entirely 
choral, and Mrs. Browning's poem with its touching 
refrain, 

"He giveth His beloved sleep!" 

was chanted by the full vested choir of the Abbey, to music 
composed for the occasion by Sir Frederick Bridge. Pre- 
ceding the Benediction, the entire vast concourse of people 
united in singing the hymn, 

"0 God, our help in ages past!" 

As that great assemblage turned away from the last 
rites in commemoration of the poet who produced the 
largest body of poetry, and the most valuable as a spiritual 
message, of any English poet, was there not wafted in the 
air the choral strains from some unseen angelic choir, that 
thrilled the venerable Abbey with celestial triumph: 

'"Glory to God — to God!' he saith: 
Knowledge by suffering entereth, 
And Life is perfected by Death." 



INDEX 



Abinger, Lord, i8 

"Abt Vogler," 205 

"Andrea del Sarto," 152, 170 

"Any Wife to Any Husband," 152 

"Apprehension, An," 47 

Arnold, Matthew, 112 

Amould, Joseph, friendship for 

Browning, 14, 39, 40, 129; letters 

to Domett, 69, 94, 99, 103 
Ashburton, Lady Louisa, 222 
"Asolando," 5, 282, 292 
"Aurora Leigh," 50, 52, 76, 127, 

134, 143, 148, 158, 160, 164, 167, 

171, 174-176, 210 

" Balaustion's Adventure," 229 

Barrett, Alfred, 16, 164 

, Arabel, 16, 50, 129, 137, 164, 

202, 212 
• , Edward (brother), 16, 22, 59; 

death of, 18, 62, 135 
, Edward (father) legal name, 

17; marriage, 18; character, 20, 

21, 121, 164; death, 178 
■ , Elizabeth. See Moulton- 

Barrett, Elizabeth 

• , George, 16, 50 

, Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees 

Cook), 16, 50; marriage, 121; 

affection for sister, 129; 137, 

164, 192 

, Mrs. (mother), 18, 21 

"Battle of Marathon," 20 
"Beatrice Signorini," 237, 267 
"Bells and Pomegranates," 14, 39, 

67, 68 
"Ben Karshook's Wisdom," 158 



Berdoe, Dr., commentary on "Para- 
celsus," 37 
"Bertha in the Lane," 46, 71 
"Bishop Blougram's Apology," 205 
Blagden, Isabella, friendship with 
Brownings, m, 112, 178, 182, 
184, 190, 191, 197, 200, 201, 207, 
225; death, 229 
Blessington, Lady, 33, 113, 138 
"Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A," 69 
"Book of the Poets, The," 64, 206 
Boyd, Hugh Stuart, tutor, 22; 
letters from Elizabeth Barrett, 
25, 45, 53, 55, 63, 64, 68, 73, 89 
Bronson, Mrs. Arthur (Katherine 
DeKay), friendship with Brown- 
ing, 242, 273; letters from Brown- 
ing, 243, 248, 249, 252-260, 265, 
271, 272, 277-286, 291, 292; 
hospitality, 242, 274-276; en- 
tertains Browning in Asolo, 286, 
287, 290; letters from Robert 
Barrett Browning, 293-294; 

letter from Sariaima Browning, 

295 
Bronson, Edith (Contessa Rucellai), 

275, 280 
Brooks, Rev. Dr. Phillips, 211, 212 
Browning, Mrs. (mother), 4-6, 38 

, Elizabeth Barrett, birth, 16; 

childhood, 17, 19; ancestry, 17, 
18; first literary work, 20; ac- 
cident to, 21; studies, 22; tastes, 
23, 24; removal to Sidmouth, 
24; translation of "Prometheus 
Bound," 44; removal to London, 
45 ; fugitive poems, 46-48, 53; 



298 



INDEX 



Hebrew Bible, 49; definite periods 
in her life, 50; change of resi- 
dence, 54, 56; notable friends, 
58, 59; publication of "The 
Seraphim," 56; literary criti- 
cisms, 60, 61, 67, 68; goes to 
Torquay, 59; personal appear- 
ance, 58; death of brother, 62; 
returns to England, 63; transla- 
tions from Greek, 64; descrip- 
tion of her room, 65; refusal to 
meet Browning, 65; publica- 
tion of two volumes of poems, 
71; literary reputation estab- 
lished, 71, 72; first letter 
from Browning, 73, 74; corre- 
spondence of poets, 74-89; meets 
Browning, 80; lyrics, 83, 84; 
marriage, 87, 89; will, 93; lyrics, 
100, loi ; mentioned for Laureate- 
ship, 121, 122; books read by, 
143; genius for friendship, 148; 
comment on dress, 151; descrip- 
tion of, 153, 179; souvenir 
locket, 153; views on life, 159; 
appreciation of Tennyson, 166; 
success of "Aurora Leigh," 174- 
176; American appreciation, 187; 
ill health, 193, 195; closing days, 
196; last words, 197; burial, 
197; tomb, 200; tablet on Casa 
Guidi to her memory, 218, 264; 
Tauchnitz edition of poems, 227 
Browning, Reuben (uncle), 8 

, Robert (father), character 

and qualities, 4-6; removal to 
Paris, 132; talent for caricature, 
137; death, 210 

, Robert (grandfather), 4 

, Robert, ancestry of, 4-6; 

birth, 4; childhood and early 
tastes, 6-8; first literary work, 
7; home atmosphere, 10, 11; 
school, 12; influenced by Byron 
and Shelley, 13, 14; juvenile 
verses, 14; publication of "Pau- 



line," 14; visit to Russia, 27, 
28; meets Wordsworth, Landor, 
Dickens, and Leigh Hunt, 30, 
32; personal appearance, 31; 
writes play for Macready, ^^-y 
visit to Venice, 35, 36; removal 
to Hatcham, 38; English friends 
and social life, 38-41; hears of 
Elizabeth Barrett, 41; visit to 
Italy, 70, 71; return to England, 
71; correspondence of the poets, 
74-89; first meeting with Miss 
Barrett, 80; marriage, 87, 89; 
sees "Sonnets from the Portu- 
guese," 109; lyrics, 120, 121, 152; 
keynote of his art, 122-125 ! i"" 
terpretation of Shelley, 133, 134; 
Fisher's portrait of, 153; Page's 
portrait of, 155; literary stand- 
ing, 172; finds "Old Yellow 
Book," 181; homage to Landor, 
183; leaves Florence forever, 
200; returns to London, 200; 
takes London house, 202; literary 
work, 203-207; extension of 
social activities, 206, 207; friend- 
ship with Jowett, 209; meeting 
with Tennyson, 210; death of 
father, 210; Oxford conferred 
degree of M.A., 211; made 
Honorary Fellow of Balliol Col- 
lege, 211; new six- volume edi- 
tion of poems, 213; dedication 
to Tennyson, 213; success of 
"The Ring and the Book," 214- 
215; comparison of character of 
Pompilia to that of his wife, 219; 
visits Scotland with the Storys, 
221-222; conversation and per- 
sonal charm, 222-224; with Mil- 
sand in "Red Cotton Night-cap 
Country," 224-226; prepares 
Tauchnitz edition of Mrs. Brown- 
ing's poems, 227; friendship with 
Domett, 228; relations with 
Tennyson, 230-232; facility for 



INDEX 



299 



rhjrming, 231; visit to Oxford 
and Cambridge, 232; sojourn at 
"La Saisiaz," 233-234; revisits 
Italy, 235, 239-240; doctrine of 
life, 237; Oxford conferred de- 
gree of D.C.L., 241; son's por- 
trait of, 242; friendship with 
Mrs. Bronson, 242; gift from 
Browning Societies, 243; letters 
to Mrs. Bronson, 243, 248, 249, 
252-260, 265, 271, 272, 277-286, 
291; Italian recognition, 245; 
honored at Edinburg, 249; letters 
to Professor Masson, 249, 250; 
removal to DeVere Gardens, 
260; Foreign Correspondent to 
Royal Academy, 266; poet of 
intensity, 270; last year in 
London, 281; return to Asolo, 
287-288; last meeting with the 
Storys and Dr. Corson, 289-290; 
death, 294; memorial inscrip- 
tion, 295; burial, 295 

Browning, Robert Barrett ("Pe- 
nini"), birth, 107; anecdotes of, 
126, 139, 144, 146, 147, 155; studies 
of, 171, 178, 180, 185, 188, 192, 
193; love of novels, 181; en- 
joyment of Siena, 184; children's 
party at French Embassy, 194; 
preparation for University, 202; 
characteristics, 202, 265; ex- 
planation of "The Ring and the 
Book," 218; begins study of 
painting, 227; picture in Royal 
Academy, 227; success in art, 
236, 241; marriage to Miss 
Coddington, 260; purchase of 
Palazzo Rezzonico, 262; por- 
trait of father, 217, 242; portrait 
of Milsand, 263; purchase of 
Casa Guidi, 265; Florentine 
villa, 264-265, 267 

■ , Robert Jardine, 38 

, Sarianna, 4, 38; letter from 

Browning, 71; letters from Mrs. 



Browning, 195; goes to live with 
brother, 211; letter to Domett, 
228; travels with brother, 236; 
letters to Mrs. Bronson, 248, 
293; death, 295 
Brownings, The, life in Paris, 92, 
93; finances, 93; journey to 
Italy, 95; winter in Pisa, 95, 
97; home in Florence, 97; visit 
to Vallombrosa, 98, 99; apart- 
ments in Casa Guidi, 100, loi; 
trip to Fano, 103, 104; literary 
work, 106; meet Story, 107; 
summer at Bagni di Lucca, 107; 
Florentine friends and life, iii- 
113, 118, 119; visit to Siena, 
125; return to England, 129; 
life and friends in Paris, 
130-137; return to England, 
137; social life in London, 137- 
141; return to Casa Guidi, 142; 
summer at Bagni di Lucca, 144- 
151; winter in Rome, 152-157; 
"Clasped Hands," 153; pilgrim- 
age to Albano, 156; return to 
Florence, 157; poetic work, 158; 
Italian appreciation, 161; re- 
turn to London, 164; Tennyson 
reads "Maud" to them, 165; 
winter and social life in Paris, 
167-172; return to Florence, 
176; Florentine gayety, 176, 178; 
summer in Normandy, 179; an- 
other winter in Rome, 180; re- 
turn to Florence, 181; summer in 
Siena, 184-185; in Florence again, 
185; Roman winter, 185, 188-189; 
journey to Florence, 189-190; last 
summer in Siena, 191-192; last 
winter in Rome, 192-193; retura 
to Casa Guidi, 195; memorials ia 
Palazzo Rezzonico, 262 
"Browning Society, The," 240 
Browning, William Shergold, 38 
Brunton, Rev. Wm., poem, 91 
"By the Fireside," 170 



300 



INDEX 



Carducci, Contessa, 71 

Carlyle, Thomas and Jane, 30, 38, 
39, 41, 61, 68, 97, 129, 130, 131 

Casa Alvisi, 242, 243, 274 

"Casa Guidi Windows," 106, 115, 
116 

"Catarina to Camoens," 71, 83 

Chaucer, project to modernize, 603 

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower 
Came," 152, 261 

"Child's Grave at Florence, A," 
121 

Chorley, Henry, 39, 40, 147 

"Christmas Eve and Easter Day," 
no, 119, 123, 124, 125 

"Christopher Smart," 237 

Clarke, Mary Graham. See Barrett, 
Mrs. 

"Clasped Hands, The," 153 

Coddington, Fanny, 260 

"Colombe's Birthday," 27, 38, 143 

"Comfort," 47 

"Conclusion," 72 

"Confessions," 46, 83, 84 

Cook, Mrs. Surtees. See Barrett, 
Henrietta 

Corson, Dr. Hiram, criticism of 
Browning's poetry, 29, 218; visit 
to Browning, 35, 222, 244, 245- 
247, 290-291; founder of Brown- 
ing Society, 240-241; letters 
from Browning, 247, 259; 215 

Cosimo I, statue of, 114 

"Cowper's Grave," 46, 57 

Coxhoe Hall, 16 

Cranch, Christopher Pearse, iii 

Crosse, Andrew, 58, 59 

" Crowned and Wedded," 46 

"Cry of the Children, The," 46 

"Ciirse for a Nation, A," 186 

Curtis, George William, 118, 119 

Cushman, Charlotte, 40, 141 

"Dead Pan, The," 47, 68, 83 

" Deaf and Dumb," 205 

"Death in the Desert, A," 205, 237 



"Denial, A," 84 

"De Profundis," 18, 52, 136 

"Development," 5 

Dickens, Charles, 30, ^S) 59) 61, 69 

Dilke, Mr., 64 

Domett, Alfred, friendship for 
Browning, 14, 39, 228; Brown- 
ing's letters to, 42, 43; Arnould's 
letters to, 69, 94, 99, 103 

Dowden, Dr. Edward, 97, 133 

Dowson, Christopher, 39 

"Drama of Exile, A," 46, 71-72 

"Dramatic Idyls," 236 

" Dramatis Personae," 203-205 

"Dryope," statue of, 263 

Dulwich Gallery, 11 

Eastnor Castle, 22 
Egerton-Smith, Miss, 233-234 
Elgin, Lady, 131, 132, 167 
Eliot, George, 190 
"Englishman in Italy, The," 71 
"Epistle of Kamish," 158 
"Essay on Mind," 22 
"Eurydice to Orpheus," 265 
"Evelyn Hope," 120 

"Face, A," 205 

Faucit, Helen (Lady Martin), 70, 

143 „ 

" Ferishtah's Fancies," 244 ■ 

Field, Kate, Browning gives locket, • 

154; visit to the Brownings, 182; 
Browning's letters to, 183, 186, 
208; Mrs. Browning's letter to, 
187 

"Fifine," 237 

"Flight of the Duchess, The," 80, 
152 

"Flute-Music," 267 

Forster, John, criticism of "Para- 
celsus," 30; friendship for Brown- 
ing, 31, 32, 129; 33,39, 69 

Fox, Rev. William Johnson, 30, 
140, 141 

"Fra Lippo Lippi," 152, 169-170 



INDEX 



301 



Franceschini, tragedy of, i8x 
Fuller, Margaret. See D'Ossoli, 

Marchesa 
Furnivall, Dr., 240 
"Futurity," 47 

Garrow, Theodosia. See Trollope 
Giorgi, Signer, 217 
"Gold Hair," 204 
Gosse, Edmund, 97, 281 
"Grammarian's Burial, A," 152 
"Greek Christian Poets, The," 23, 

65, 206 
Griffin, Professor Hall, 27, 118, 

134 
"Guardian Angel, The," 103, 152 
Gumey, Rev. Archer, 38 

"Half Rome," 218 

Haworth, Fanny, letter from Brown- 
ing, 36; 40 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 150, 178- 
179 

"Hector in the Garden," 47 

"Helen's Tower," 222 

"Herve Riel," 211 

Hillard, George Stillman, 106, 118 

Hodell, Dr. Charles W., 215-216 

Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, 48 

"Holy Cross Day," 158 

Hope End, 16, 19, 22, 24 

Home, Richard Hengist, letter 
from Elizabeth Barrett, 19, 59; 
friendship with Miss Barrett, 
30, 53, 60, 61, 62, 6s, 68 

Hosmer, Harriet, takes cast of 
"Clasped Hands," 153; excur- 
sion with Brownings, 156, 157; 
letter from Browning, 168; visits 
poets, 191, 194 

"How They Brought the Good 
News from Ghent to Aix," 35 

"In a Balcony," 144, 158, 203 
"In a Gondola," 36 
"Inclusions," 84 



"Incondita," 14, 140 

"Inn Album," 232, 269 

"Insufficiency," 47, 84 

"In the Doorway," 207 

"Isabel's Child," 46, 57 

Italy, political conditions of, 105, 

108, 115, 117, 121, 143, 180 
"Ivan Ivanovitch," 27, 236 

James, Henry, characterization of 

Browning, 224 
"James Lee's Wife," 204, 261 
Jameson, Mrs., friendship with 

Miss Barrett, 73, 92, 93, 94, 95, 

96, 129; letter from Browning, 

108 
Jerrold, Douglas, 41 
Jowett, Dr., 209, 229, 281 

Kemble, Mrs. Fanny, 129, 138, 153, 

154, iSS 

Kenyon, John, ;^y, meets Brown- 
ing, 40; offers an introduction to 
Miss Barrett, 41; 45; visit to 
Rydal Mount, 56; account of, 
58, 59; termed the "joy-giver," 
65; shows manuscript of "Dead 
Pan " to Browning, 68; dedication 
of "Paracelsus" to, 69; apprecia- 
tion of, 74; letters to the Brown- 
ings, 74, 97; friendship, 112, 113, 
129, 137; dedication of "Aurora 
Leigh " to, 174; death and 
legacy to Brownings, 176 

Kingsley, Charles, 139 

King Victor and King Charles, 69 

Kiimey, Mrs., 144, 145 

"Lady and the Painter, The," 

288 
"Lady Geraldine's Courtship," 71, 

72, 73 
"Lament for Adonis," 23 
Landor, Walter Savage, chirog- 

raphy of, 23; meets Browning, 

30; courtesy of, 32; meets Miss 



302 



INDEX 



Barrett, 55, 59, 137; quoted, 60; 
intimacy with Leigh Hunt, 112, 
113; opinions, 138; guest of 
Brownings, 182; homage from 
Browning, 183; guest of Storys, 
183, 184, 190, 192 

"La Saisiaz," 233-234 

"Last Poems," 202 

"La Torre all' Antella," 264, 295 

"La VaUiere," ^^ 

Leighton, Sir Frederic, 200 

"Les Charmettes," 238 

"Lost Leader, The," 32 

"Loved Once," 83, 84 

Lowell, James Russell, 51, 74 

"Luria," 69 

Lytton, Bulwer, 33, 53, 60 

, Lord (Owen Meredith), 142; 

entertains Mrs. Browning, 145- 
146; visits the Brownings, 149, 
150, 158 

Macready, William, meeting with 
Browning, 30, 31; suggests play- 
writing to Browning, 32; sees 
"Strafford," ^^; produces "Straf- 
ford," 34; dinner to Browning, 
39; produces "A Blot in the 
'Scutcheon," 69, 70 

Marcello, Contessa, 276 

Martineau, Harriet, friendship with 
Brownings, 33, 35, 39, 60, 62, 
68 

Masson, Professor, Browning en- 
tertained by, 249-251 

Mazzini, 13, 143 

Medici, Marchesa Peruzzi di, birth- 
day fete, 184; reminiscences of, 
188, 193; visit to Scotland, 221; 
villa of, 239; translation of 
Dupre's Autobiography, 257; 
Browning's letter to, 257; Floren- 
tine palace of, 265 

Medici, statue of Fernandino di, 

173 
"Meeting at Night," 120 



"Men and Women," 106, 157, 164, 
169, 172 

Millais, Lady, 240 

, Sir John Everett, Browning's 

letter to, 227-228; 251 

Milnes, Monckton (Lord Houghton), 
30, 60, 61, 138; christening party, 
139 

Milsand, Joseph, meeting with 
Browning, 134; paper on Brown- 
ing, 135; letter from Browning, 
152, 225; friendship with Brown- 
ings, 159, 224, 225, 226; criticism 
of "Aurora Leigh," 176; death, 
259; portrait, 263 

Mitford, Mary Russell, 32; asso- 
ciation with the Brownings, 32, 
45. 55, 56, 58, 61, 65, 72; letter 
from Mrs. Browning, 108, 118, 
135, 136, 159; death, 173 

Mohl, Mme., 132, 167, 171 

Moore, Mrs. Bloomfield, 252 

Moul ton-Barrett, Elizabeth (niece), 
18 

. See Barrett, explanation of 

name, 17 

Nancioni, il Signor Dottore, 245 

Nettleship, Mr., essays on Brown- 
ing, 213 

"New Spirit of the Age, The," 
60,68 

Nightingale, Florence, 140 

"Old Yellow Book, The," 215 

"One Word More," 123, 168-169, 
205 

Ongaro, Dall', 194 

"Only a Cure," 121 

Ossoli, Marchesa d' (Margaret 
Fuller), III, 112; visits the 
Brownings, 118; death, 112, 126 

"Other Half Rome, The," 218 

"Pacchiarotto," 232 

Page, William, 152, 155, 181 



INDEX 



303 



Palazzo Giustiniani, 24a 

Peruzzi, 265 

Pitti, 102, 105, 106 

Rezzonico, 262-264, 290, 293, 

295 
"Paracelsus," 14, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 

34, 36, 37, 39, 57, 69, 168, 237 
" Parleyings," 269 
"Parting at Morning," 120 
Patmore, Coventry, 140 
"Pauline," 12, 14, 15, 28, 34, 57, 

169, 172, 267 
"Penini." See Browning, Robert 

Barrett 
"Pippa Passes," 36, 65, 67, 69, 271, 

286-287 
Pius IX (Pio Nono), 105, 115, 117, 

118, 121 
Poe, Edgar Allan, 52 
"Poems before Congress," 185 
"Poet's Vow, The," 53, 55, 57 
"Pompilia," 206, 218, 219 
"Portrait, A," 18, 164 
Powers, Hiram, 102, 112, 118, 142 
Prince of Wales (Edward VII), 

i8o-i8r 
Proctor ("Barry Cornwall"), 30, 

33, 40, 61, 69, 129 
"Prometheus Bound," 23, 25, 44 
"Proof and Disproof," 84 
"Prospice," 123, 205 

"Question and Answer," 84 

"Rabbi Ben Ezra," 205 
"Recollections of a Literary Life," 

135 
"Red Cotton Night-cap Country," 

226, 230 
"Return of the Druses, The," 69 
"Rhapsody of Life's Progress, A," 

47, 48, 83 
" Rhyme of the Duchess May, The," 

227 
"Ring and the Book, The," 182, 

203, 205, 214-220 



Ripert-Monclar, Marquis Am6d^e 

de, 28, 38, 153 
Ritchie, Lady, 153, 154, 226 
Robertson, John, 35, 39 
Rogers, Arthur, 273 
"Romances and Lyrics," 67 
"Romaunt of Margret, The," 53, 58 
"Rosny," 267 
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 139, 165, 

166, i6g, 174 

Sand, George, 131, 136 

"Saul," 120, 157 

Scotti, Signor, 71 

"Seraphim, The," 46, 56, 58, no 

Sharp, VViUiam, quoted, 6; sug- 
gested origin of "Flight of the 
Duchess," 12; quoted, 28; de- 
scription of Browning, 31; 43 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 13, 133, 134 

Silverthorne, Mrs., 14 

"Sleep, The," 46, 83 

Smith, Alexander, 151 

Smith, George Murray, 247, 270, 
296 

" Sonnets from the Portuguese," 50, 
71, Q7, 108, 109, no, 123, 168 

"Sordello," 14, 27, 28, 35, 41-42, 
69, 171, 207, 237 

"Soul's Tragedy, A," 69 

"Statue and the Bust, The," 152, 

173 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 90 

Story, Edith. See Medici, Mar- 
chessa Peruzzi di 

, William Wetmore and Eme- 

line. Browning's first meeting, 
107, in; characteristics, 118, 
119; associations with the Brown- 
ings, 148-152, 155, 184, 185, 192, 
196, 197, 199, 221, 239; enter- 
tain Landor, 183; characteriza- 
tion of Hawthorne, 150; last 
meeting with Browning, 289- 
290 

"Strafford," 33, 34, 35, 57 



304 



INDEX 



Talfourd, Field, 39 

Talfourd, Sergeant, 30, 32, 40, 

60, 69 

Taylor, Bayard, 129 

Tennyson, Alfred, 15; comment 
on "Sordello," 41; 60; works, 56, 
68; Miss Barrett's comments on, 

61, 67, 120; becomes Laureate, 
122; letter to Mrs. Browning, 
139, 140; reads "Maud" to the 
poets, 165; letters from Brown- 
ing, 209, 230, 284; friendship 
with Browning, 231; dedication, 
213; regarding Browning's lines, 
232 

, Frederick, 144, 158 

, Hallam, 296 

"TertiumQuid," 218 

Thackeray, Anne. See Ritchie, 

Lady 
Ticknor and Fields, 156 



Tittle, Margaret, 4 
"Toccata of Galuppi's, A," 120 
Trollope, Thomas Adolphus and 
Theodosia, 59, iii, 112, 190, 229 
"Two Poets of Croisic," 236 

"Valediction, A," 84 
Vallombrosa, 98, 99 
VUlari, Mme. Pasquale, 112 
"Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus, 

The," 46 
"Vision of Poets, A," 71 

Wiedemann, Sarah Anna, 4-6 
"Wine of Cyprus," 23, 86 
"Woman's Last Word, A," 120 
Wordsworth, William, 30, 32, 55, 
56, 59, 68, 94 

Zampini, Fanny (Contessa Salazar), 
161 



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Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
',/ ,< Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: March 2009 

•^ PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
*'' V. Cranberry Township, PA 16066 

■^^ rS. ^ -!■■ ''-^ (724)779-2111 



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